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Photo Gallery: Matthew Fox Attends Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Annual Installation Luncheon

SL-LOST — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:38:19 +0000

Yesterday Matthew Fox attended the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Annual Installation Luncheon at The Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, CA. Among other celebrities invited to this event were Nicole Kidman, Breaking Bad‘s Bryan Craston, Desperate Housewives‘ Eva Longoria and Glee‘s Jane Lynch.

Check out more photos after the jump!

[Photos via Wire Image]

New Interview with Matthew Fox

SL-LOST — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 16:32:49 +0000

Via The Hollywood Reporter:

On the heels of his first-ever Emmy nom and his much-buzzed-about departure from television after 18 years, Fox is finally getting lost. Together with his wife, Margherita, and their two children, Kyle and Byron, Fox is settling into a 10-acre ranch in Bend, Ore. — a world away from his former life shooting the series in the Aloha state. He opens up to THR’s Leslie Bruce about his Emmy nom, his plans for a post-”Lost” future and, of course, that final episode.

The Hollywood Reporter: An Emmy nom at long last! Are you feeling vindicated?

Fox: I had no idea the awards were being announced that day, but it’s very nice to be recognized. I thought the show had a really great season, especially with expectations being so enormous. I think that’s really saying something. I’m just looking forward to partying with the cast and raising a glass to the show.

THR: The series finale met mixed reviews among fans and critics. What’s been your response?

Fox: Obviously, the show left room for interpretation when the white light poured through. I don’t pay attention to how it was received. Damon (Lindelof) told me the ending two months prior and I was extremely moved. I thought it was absolutely beautiful.

THR: Dr. Jack Shephard was essentially the show’s “everyman” character. How difficult was it channeling such an iconic role?

Fox: I put a lot of myself into him, so it was tremendously emotional. He started as the hero of the show and we thought the audience would be bored out of their minds if he were the knight in shining armor all the time. We wanted to take the first four years and destroy him. So, that’s what we did. And in the end, Jack redeemed himself before he could move on; I think that’s why I was nominated. It has more to do with Jack than anything I was doing for six years.

THR: What did the show’s first Emmy win in 2005 for outstanding drama series mean to you?

Fox: It meant that when the show won, a whole bunch of people jumped on the bandwagon that shouldn’t have. To be honest, people felt like they were missing out, so they came, tested it and left. Then it was perceived that the show took a turn for the worst, and it
wasn’t. They weren’t ever going to be “Lost” fans.

THR: You have said that “Lost” will be your final affair with television. Really?

Fox: I’ve done 300 hours of television. I’ve spent 12 years operating between two characters — six years on “Party of Five” and six years on “Lost” — and I’m at a point in my career where I want more flexibility. I want to call my own shots: when I’m working and when I’m not. It doesn’t have anything to do with snobbery. Some of the best writing is on television right now.

THR: If you could step into the character of any of your fellow lead actor nominees, comedy or drama, who would it be?

Fox: Michael C. Hall’s role in “Dexter” would be very interesting. To play a serial killer in a lead role, that’s pretty cool!

Apologia Pro Vita Fidei: The Cultural and Spiritual Journey of Jack Shephard in LOST by Pearson Moore

SL-LOST — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 20:54:37 +0000

It was preposterous.

Push the “execute” button every 108 minutes. Why? Because Marvin Candle commands you to do so. That is, accept on faith the instructions of a man in a white lab coat–a man of science–to perform a nonsensical task on obsolete equipment in an ancient facility built by a long-dead organisation.

The orientation film’s use of scientific imagery to perpetuate the charade was an assault on the very foundations of reason, logic, and science, an absurdity not worth any thinking person’s indulgence, least of all that of expert spinal surgeon Jack Shephard, M.D.

Jack left the Swan Station after viewing the orientation film with Locke and arguing with him over the significance of the film. But something drove him back to the station. Was it the fact that John had saved his life a few weeks before? Or was something else in play?

LOCKE: You have to [push the button].
….
JACK: No. It’s not real. Look, you want to push the button, you do it yourself.
LOCKE: If it’s not real, then what are you doing here, Jack? Why did you come back? Why do you find it so hard to believe?
JACK: Why do you find it so easy?
LOCKE: It’s never been easy! …. It’s a leap of faith, Jack.

Jack Shephard, without a word, reached out his right index finger and depressed the execute button. He had taken the first step on an arduous, lonely, soul-shaking journey. In just over three years, Jack Shephard, man of science, would be transformed into Locke’s disciple, the Island’s supreme shaman, committed man of faith.

Disorientation

“Jack is here because he has to do something. He can’t be told what that is. He’s got to find it himself.”

Jacob’s words in “Lighthouse” were in full force on the afternoon of September 22, 2004, when Jack experienced the most bewildering set of conditions he had ever been forced to confront.

It took Jack only a few seconds to figure out what might have required several minutes of anyone else. But Jack had been trained in logical thinking all his life, and his nimble mind quickly strung the facts together into sequences of empirical findings that could lead to only one rational syllogism: the wreckage on the beach, the people screaming and moaning and limping, those unconscious but still alive, and those who would never again draw breath were all the aftermath of a tragedy in the air. The plane had crashed.

Jack sprang into action, calling upon every skill he had learned in medical school and in the school of hard knocks going back to the grade-school punch in the face and his father’s contempt for Jack’s abilities. He brought a pregnant woman to safety, freed a man pinned under wreckage, resuscitated a woman with neither pulse nor breath, saved several people from the concussive effects of explosion, gave instructions to others trying to help, organised the relief effort, and became the de facto leader of the forty-eight who survived.

None of it seemed to matter. Not the several lives he saved, not his leadership speech six days later, not his ability to triage actions into tasks immediate, tasks for later, and tasks not actionable. Save those close to death, treat minor wounds as time allows, and say a prayer and wrap a red tag around the toes of people whose injuries are beyond the limits of a septic and deadly environment. Federal Agent Edward Mars should have received a red tag. Anyone else would have given him morphine and a prayer. Or Sawyer’s remedy. But euthanasia was not in Jack’s medical playbook, and allowing anyone to die was not in Jack’s personal playbook. He had to save everyone. He had to fix everyone, even if he caused them pain. He had to prove his father wrong, and the reproducible exactitudes of science and medicine provided the path toward the spiritual and professional redemption that his father had taken from him.

“You don’t have what it takes, Jack.” Christian’s words to Jack were a gauntlet thrown to the ground, a summons to determined and sustained action to prove valour and substance. The island, this ordinary, tropical oasis in the sea, was to be Jack’s operating suite, the place where he would demonstrate forever that he did have what it takes.

It was not until that evening that Jack and those who now looked to him as leader and medical saviour would realise that the crash was the least of their present concerns, and that this island was not ordinary, perhaps not even tropical, and it was definitely not an oasis. Some being or force or entity was able to fling a one-hundred kilogram man several hundred metres and spew tonnes of dirt and trees into the air in a split second. Polar bears roamed the Island, seeking human flesh for their next meal. Mysterious music and scratchy voices came from places–or times–distant. A recording in French was being broadcast every thirty seconds–for the last sixteen years.

These were phenomena beyond Jack’s abilities, and therefore beyond the scope of science. Nothing in experience or training or intellect of even the most gifted scientist or accomplished physician could bring coherence to the events and conditions manifest on the Island. Charlie framed the problem:

“Guys, where are we?”

The Island was unlike any other place on earth. Science was not only useless here. It was invalid. It did not contain the assumptions, tools, or processes required to deal with any of the Island’s questions.

The crash was the first step, the grand cataclysm that would reach into Jack’s soul, violently loose him from the solid foundations of reason that had grounded him, oriented him, provided him with objective bases for decision and deed. It was the first punch to the gut. There would be many more, a flurry of punches over three years, not only painful, but deadly. The Island was not gentle with Jack.

Foundations

His name is Roger Bacon. Nowadays he would be addressed as “professor” or “doctor”, but he conducted his experiments and gave his lectures in the early years of the University of Paris and Oxford University, starting in 1237 and ending in 1294. His title at Oxford was Master, though after his death he was known worldwide as Doctor Mirabilis (“wonderful professor”).

Bacon was the first in a long line of philosophers who adhered to the intellectual rigours of empirical science. His latter-day disciples include the British philosophers John Locke and David Hume. Bacon is most often credited with the first full development of what we now understand to be the scientific method. His decree at Oxford: Accept nothing on faith. Believe only what eyes see and ears hear. For Bacon, the only legitimate route to scientific understanding was the difficult, time-consuming road of empiricism. Before Bacon, the world’s most authoritative “scientist” was the ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle.

Aristotle, if he had witnessed Bacon’s slow, determined, precise placement of mirrors, lenses, and torches in his optics laboratory, would have scoffed at the medieval professor’s slavish devotion to unnecessary experiments. Observation of natural phenomena (not laboratory creations) and armchair philosophising was all that was required to reveal the secrets of nature, even phenomena as apparently complex as the behaviour of light as it passes through lenses and bounces off mirrors. Raw syllogism and understanding of Causes was sufficient to any scientific endeavour. Bacon would have listened (he understood the Greek language, after all), but patience wearing thin, he’d probably have responded in Latin or French, chuckling to himself over the ancient philosopher’s inability to understand.

Among the several areas in which Bacon faulted Aristotle for lack of rigour was the notion of Final Cause. The Final Cause was an entity’s purpose. The Final Cause of a pencil is writing. One need not have any experience to assign a Final Cause. The question of a pencil’s purpose, a pencil’s destiny, was not a question Bacon could address in the laboratory. He could load a sharpened pencil into a crossbow and with it pierce a man’s chest. Did this mean the pencil’s “Final Cause” was instrument of death? The question of purpose or destiny is not a question admissible to empirical science, and to pose it in the laboratory is to misunderstand the entire methodology and intent (purpose!) of experimental science.

Science Without Purpose

I provide below a précis drawn from earlier essays regarding science as it relates to LOST. For those who wish to view the original passages in their entirety, please consult the appropriate headings at these addresses:

http://www.sl-lost.com/2010/06/01/humanitas-insulae-the-culture-of-lost-by-pearson-moore/
http://www.sl-lost.com/2010/02/14/impartial-risk-cultural-musings-on-the-resurrection-of-john-locke/

Science is confined by logic. If I expand the limits of research to any inquiry that might be included within the scope of logic, science, and mathematics, I must necessarily accept that certain limits nevertheless exist. Most importantly, I may not ever claim to investigate or to have discovered any facet of reality. The best I might hope to accomplish, even after a lifetime in the laboratory, is to establish the adherence of certain observed phenomena to models of reality that I create through inference, induction, and deduction. These models are most often referred to as theories, but they can never explain the real world. We rely on assumptions that negate any possible connection with reality.

One of the most important assumptions underlying science is Ockham’s Razor (http://www.galilean-library.org/manuscript.php?postid=43832). In plain language, Ockham’s Razor insists the scientist must accept the simplest solution to a problem as being the correct solution. If I can imagine a chemical reaction as being the result of the collision of five molecule, but I can equally imagine that the reaction is the result of the collision of just two molecules, and if every observation I have made supports either of the fruits of my imagination, I must accept as valid and correct the imagined event that includes just two molecules. The reality may be that only one molecule is required, or seven molecules are required, or the event occurs only when there are sunspots on our solar system’s star, but I can never know this. Even if the model I develop happens to support a theory that is close to reality, I may not ever claim to have elucidated even the slightest aspect of reality. I am allowed to conclude only that certain behaviours seem reproducible and that they also seem to adhere to a model consistent with Ockham’s Razor and the other underlying assumptions of the scientific method.

Science and logic are imperfect subsets of reality. If we rely on logic as revelation of reality we will discern only an incomplete, warped world far from true reality.

Science makes sensory observations, catalogues these data, uses the rules of mathematics and logic to create connections among the observations, and builds empirical findings into models of reality that we call hypotheses and theories. A scientist truly comfortable in her laboratory will never claim she is revealing reality, only a poor model for certain physical behaviours that seem to follow a reproducible pattern. There is no truth in science. Science is not a tool for illuminating the fulness of reality.

I pick up a pen with the five fingers of my right hand. Science notes this fact, records the observations associated with the act. And that is all science can do. Science cannot tell us my motivation for picking up the pen, cannot predict what I will do with it, how I will do it, what the future outcomes will be, or how the ramifications of the simple act will ripple through the greater world, how the act will affect others.

Science cannot place even the simplest act within the continuum of reality. Complex interactions are so far outside the realm of pure science that they virtually defy adequate description. In fact, no interaction can be fully characterised. Science and logic must be forever partial, incomplete statements of certain events, and they can never claim to explain a basis in reality.

Scroll up to the photograph of Roger Bacon and take a few moments to scrutinise the image. Look at the clothing he is wearing and his haircut.

Life With Purpose

Imagine now you are approaching Master Bacon on a cold winter day on the busy Oxford campus. You see his brown robe–the Franciscan habit–and his strange haircut, called a tonsure. The good friar is on his way from the lecture hall to mass at the basilica, where he is to be the celebrant. He carries two books in his arms: his Opus majus V (collected works in optics), and the Bible.

Perhaps you are Aristotelian in your outlook, but whatever your philosophy of life, you carry an ornate and very sharp pugio (Roman dagger) and when you draw close you raise it to his neck, ready to end his life.

“Renounce your belief in optics,” you say, “or prepare to die.”

Bacon laughs, hands over the book he laboured over for many years, and says, “Fine. I renounce my belief in optics.”

Probably you are emboldened by this unexpected and easy success, for the next words out of your mouth are these: “Renounce your belief in your Deity, or prepare to die.”

The response is immediate and unexpected.

“I cannot but renounce the way in which I practice my faith, for I am a weak and unworthy servant of my Master. But the One I worship as Creator I embrace as Redeemer, never to be renounced, always to be served and adored. I hope your dagger is sharp, for your path to this Bible lies over my dead body.”

Roger Bacon was a practitioner of pure empirical science. He was also a priest, a friar in the Franciscan tradition. There was for him no conflict between faith and science. But if push came to shove, Bacon would sacrifice science in an instant. He would never sacrifice his faith.

Becoming Roger Bacon

One man became a persistent thorn in Jack’s side. Like his father, this man was essentially telling Jack that he was not up to the tasks before him. Everything he had based his life on, according to this man, was fundamentally flawed, insufficient to the daily struggles of life in this hostile place, invalid to the enormous problems of the Island.

LOCKE: You and I don’t see eye-to-eye sometimes, Jack… you’re a man of science.
JACK: Yeah, and what does that make you?
LOCKE: Me, well, I’m a man of faith. Do you really think all this is an accident — that we, a group of strangers survived, many of us with just superficial injuries? Do you think we crashed on this place by coincidence — especially, this place? We were brought here for a purpose, for a reason, all of us. Each one of us was brought here for a reason.
JACK: Brought here? And who brought us here, John?
LOCKE: The Island. The Island brought us here. This is no ordinary place, you’ve seen that, I know you have. But the Island chose you, too, Jack. It’s destiny.

This video, narrated in John Locke’s own voice, is arguably the best fan-produced Lost trailer (though my favourite remains this one, also produced by SL-Lost: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swHST-s0s3E), and one of the reasons I decided to submit essays at SL-Lost. The video I think captures something of the essence of LOST; I find it difficult to view it now without becoming a bit misty-eyed.

Locke was primary proponent of the nonsense Jack had heard on the Swan Station orientation film. By the time Locke and Jack viewed the film they were firm adversaries. I am not certain about Jack’s rationale for resolving the conflict depicted in the image above. As I speculated in the introduction to this essay, he may have pushed the “execute” key out of some feeling that he “owed” Locke something for saving his life. Or perhaps he realised pushing the button was the quickest way to end a pointless argument that had already consumed precious time of far too many people.

Most likely, Jack had no rationale. No syllogism led to the conclusion that he had to press the button. Rather, I believe he had the first glimmers of a “Final Cause”. He could not yet discern a purpose for pushing the button, but he was willing to admit of the possibility of a destiny not distilled from logic. He had already tasted failure, in the death of Boone on his makeshift operating table. That same night he found his advanced training of no use, and minimum medical knowledge not indispensible to the survival of his flock; Kate, with no medical training, delivered a very healthy Aaron Littleton into the world. I think that first bit of doubt regarding the universal applicability of science was what allowed him to follow another man’s instinct. Locke referred to any decision to push the button as “a leap of faith”. Compared to the enormous leaps that would be required of Jack in the next thirty-eight months, depressing the execute key was a small step. But it was the first movement, a significant step, toward a life of purpose.

Jack’s Reality

Jack enjoyed a reciprocal love relationship with Sarah for the first few years after he operated on her spine and restored her ability to walk. His higher calling at the time of the crash was Science. He enjoyed several reciprocal trusting relationships, the most visible example being the one with Hugo Reyes, though he trusted several others, among them Kate Austen, Sayid Jarrah, and later, Bernard Nadler. Hurley was always special. Even from the earliest days of the crash, Jack entrusted Hugo with essential tasks: the survivor census, the distribution of food from the Swan Station stores, the holding of survivor medical information. Hurley was Jack’s first lieutenant on the Island and closest friend off the Island.

Jack presented a solid exterior persona, but he was near the end of his rope emotionally and intellectually. His closest friend, his wife, left him for another man. He had never really been attached to Sarah the woman, never allowed his spirit to touch hers. She had been a project for him, something to “fix”, not a person to respect and adore and love. Science was the purpose to which he had dedicated his life, but the routines of syllogistic logic could do nothing to alleviate the fact that his father died in an alcoholic stupor and his body had somehow migrated out of its coffin to places unknown.

Jack had no soul mate, only very peripheral trust relationships with a handful of people, he was beginning to question his life’s calling, and he was the victim of two individuals who seemed to torment him at every turn. Christian believed Jack continually fell short of what he ought to be. Locke told Jack that everything he believed in, the purpose to which Jack had dedicated his life, was insufficient.

Jack’s reality is our reality. Who among us has committed heart, mind, and soul to a purpose greater than self? Who among us has a true soul mate? Jack’s lack of clear antagonist, and the pain associated with that ambiguity, was our pain, too. Who was the true antagonist in LOST? John Locke? Christian Shephard? Benjamin Linus? Charles Widmore? Martin Keamy? Stuart Radzinsky? A great deal of thought over several years would be required to discern the identity of the true antagonist.

Jack’s Needs

Sarah Shephard was a beautiful woman. She was kind, gracious, self-sacrificing–in every way beautiful. I would imagine just about anyone looking at the photograph above would say Sarah is a pretty woman. Everyone, that is, except Dr. Jack Shephard. Jack, before 2007, would look at this photograph and note only that Sarah had a perfectly formed spine, that he had “fixed” her. Such were the depths of his psychosis, his self-absorption.

Jack near the end of 2004 was experiencing the beginnings of a life-altering sequence of events. His conversion was accelerated by an emotionally degraded condition, but the extraordinary transformation he was to undergo would nearly destroy him. He would need something–some constant–to ensure his survival through the worst of the storms to batter his soul.

He found that Constant in a woman of extraordinary beauty. Kate Austen never told anyone that she attached the oxygen mask to Agent Ed Mars, that she ensured the survival of the man who had relentlessly hunted her across the United States. She never told anyone of her deep love for her mother, for Tom Brennan, for Claire and Aaron. Her love of others showed in her attitudes, in her actions, in her lovely smile. A fugitive, a murderer, Kate paradoxically had deep inside her an abiding respect and love for her fellow human beings. The great surgeon Dr. Jack Shephard, accomplished and admired, paragon of virtue, exemplar to all, never felt that deep love in his life before the Island. Kate possessed a beauty entirely foreign to Jack’s understanding, but he needed empathy for others, had to understand and act on others’ needs if he was to become the person he was destined to be. More than anyone he had ever known, Jack needed Kate Austen.

Jack’s Descent

The crash of Oceanic Flight 815.
The Smoke Monster.
Charlie’s hanging and almost-death.
Boone’s death.
Shannon’s death.
Capture and imprisonment by the Others.
Desmond’s prediction of Charlie’s death.
Charlie’s death.
Keamy’s band of Blackwater thugs.
Locke, right about everything:
The freighter coming to kill them, not rescue them.
Having faith strong enough to move mountains–and the Island on which the mountains stood.
Their purpose on the Island.
The resurrection of Christian Shephard.
And on top of it all, Locke’s death–by suicide.

Less than two years after their rescue from the Island, Jack was at the end of his endurance. Everything he believed was proven wrong. Everything his greatest nemesis said was true, and then some. Locke had accessed some reservoir of truth that went far beyond the facts Jack had once believed were incontrovertible truth. The truths Locke put into words had nothing to do with science, were unconstrained by even the most generous allowances of logic. Locke had discovered absolutes not subject to the shifting sands of hypothesis or theory. They were true in the past, true now, would remain always true regardless of future events.

Little remained to anchor Jack in this world. His apartment full of maps and protractors and global coordinates and calculations and flight schedules, he was obsessed by a single idea: returning to the Island. It was the only place his life had any meaning, but there was no way to return. He stood on top of the bridge, looking to the bare concrete far below, ready to end his life. He was startled out of his plan by the sound of a crash behind him. He temporarily reverted to his former self, saving a woman and her child from the flames. But his final salvation was delivered by a most unlikely agent. “We have to return to the Island,” Ben Linus told him, and Ben knew exactly the way it could be accomplished. Jack Shephard was ready.

Jack’s Post-Enlightenment Reality

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

Jack was no Übermensch, for belief in such a monstrosity would require a relinquishing of faith. Jack’s transformation was a knock-out blow to the warped Nietzschean ideal of radical individualism and the denial of absolute truth. Jack’s journey almost killed him, and did make him stronger, but his was a strength based on service to Locke’s eternal truths, not a Nazi-like worship of self.

Jack became a man of faith due to the good example of John Locke. The transformation was not instantaneous, but occurred over several months. In the critical weeks leading to Jack’s final purpose, he had still not formulated an understanding of his destiny. At the end of Season Five, only days after he had stopped feeding his body opiates and vodka, he remained largely incoherent. Sawyer beat a confession out of him: Jack wanted to detonate the hydrogen bomb so he could have a second chance with Kate. His mind was still foggy from the drugs, I think.

Had he forgotten Kate’s words on Penny’s ship? “I have always been with you,” Kate told him. Kate was Jack’s Constant. He didn’t need to do anything, least of all risk the lives of dozens of people and the welfare of the Island, to secure his place in her heart.

Such were Jack’s actions as he came out of his psychosis and began to understand his destiny. Attempting to detonate the bomb accomplished nothing that had not already been established. Everyone knew of “The Incident”; it was not until Juliet died and everyone else was transported thirty years into the future that we understood who was responsible for the catastrophic event. Perhaps history would record that Stuart Radzinsky alone was guilty of an over-exuberance that led to the uncontrolled discharge of raw electromagnetic power. But Jack’s folly certainly contributed to the severity and enduring effects of the catastrophe.

Jack was stronger, not only through enlightenment, but through those who came before him, through the one who risked all and died to bring him back to the Island. The one whose body was not resurrected, and lies on Boone Hill, on the Island that was his Constant.

Compare Jack’s pitiful, bottom-of-the-barrel existence in 2004 with the emotional and spiritual wealth and richness of his life in 2007. In 2004, Jack believed John Locke and his own father to be enemies. In 2007, Jack considered Locke his spiritual master. And though he did not yet know it, Christian Shephard did more than bring Jack the physical refreshment of liquid water (in “White Rabbit”). Christian also shepherded his son to the spiritual renewal that only the living water of the Island could provide. In the space of three years, Locke and Christian went from apparent enemies to the spiritual leaders of a vast cohort: Kate, Hurley, Sawyer, Ben, Richard, Miles, Frank, and the great martyrs, Charlie and Sayid. They were all conspiring to pull Jack to greatness, to fulfill his destiny, which was the destruction of evil and the salvation of the Island.

Love and Faith

There are many types of love, and many ways to express and understand faith. Romeo and Juliet, above, express erotic love. Kate’s love of Claire and Aaron was not erotic, but agape, or altruistic love.

Many fans of LOST consider Kate’s decision to leave the Island, and Jack’s decision to stay, to be unrealistic, and not in keeping with their spiritual connection. Wouldn’t Kate have stayed with Jack to the bitter end? Perhaps she could have pulled him to the Temple, to heal his wounds.

No. The depiction of the their parting was entirely realistic. But don’t trust me on this point. Trust your grandmothers and great-grandmothers, and anyone who lived through or fought in the War.

“Casablanca” told the story of a woman and a man who truly loved each other. They went their separate ways, just as Jack and Kate did, and for essentially the same reasons. Ilsa Lund’s feelings for Rick Blaine were stronger than her attachment to the freedom fighter, Victor Laszlo. But Laszlo was Europe’s hope against Nazi plans to enslave the world.

Ilsa: But what about us?
Rick: We’ll always have Paris. We didn’t have, we, we lost it until you came to Casablanca. We got it back last night.
Ilsa: When I said I would never leave you.
Rick: And you never will. But… Where I’m going, you can’t follow. Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

With those words, Rick forced Ilsa on the plane, to maintain her position as wife and help mate to Laszlo. Neither of them wanted to leave the other, but the salvation of Europe, the salvation of the world, literally rested on their decision. Depriving themselves, they made the only possible decision, the only human decision. A decision based in faith.

“Casablanca” was intended to be just another crank-’em-out propaganda piece, something to stir up the boys on the front and keep the fires burning back home. It became much more than that; to this day, “Casablanca” is regarded by many as the finest film of the twentieth century. The acting was first rate, but the production values, even by 1942 standards, were poor.

There can be only one solid reason for Casablanca’s appeal over the decades: It describes something of the true nobility of the human spirit.

Your grandmothers and great-grandmothers know the film, feel its authenticity, because they know of real-life Rick Blaines and Ilsa Lunds. Countless thousands of men gave up family and girlfriend or wife to fight in the war. Many who might have been rejected for service falsified medical records so they could fight. The United States was a latecomer to World War II, but thousands of men in that country smuggled themselves across the Canadian border before the U.S. declared war and fought in the Canadian or British armies. John Paul Merton, U.S. citizen and brother of famed spiritual writer Thomas Merton, died while flying for the RAF. John Gillespie Magee, Jr., author of “High Flight” (the poem that for many years was the “sign-off”, in the days when television stations “went off the air” (stopped broadcasting), usually somewhere between midnight and two a.m.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzQYd_INSOg), was an American eager to fight. He slipped into Canada and died, in flight, wearing a Royal Canadian Air Force uniform.

John Paul Merton and John Gillespie Magee, Jr., and the countless thousands of others, did not leave behind friends and family, wives and girlfriends to fight for England or for Canada. They did it to fight for us, for all of us in this world. Their love for family and spouse was not weak. It was strong. They were willing to die for that love. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” The sacrifice they made is not “proof” of anything, but is the surest testament to the abiding goodness of the human spirit.

Island Faith

The LOST character most closely associated with an organised religion was the Roman Catholic, Mr. Eko. It can be argued, and I think correctly, that the character most truly observant of the meaningful tenets of an organised religion was the Muslim, Sayid Jarrah. We saw Ben praying in a Christian church. Charlie crossed himself before he died (though with his left hand; perhaps a brand of Anglicanism that is not much publicised outside of the U.K.?). Kate was married in a Christian church, though she profaned the proceedings by marrying under false name and false pretense.

But adherence to organised religion is not what LOST means by the word “faith”. Neither is faith on Mittelos a question of simply believing in something. One might be the most devout Muslim, the most observant Jew, the most committed disciple of Jesus, and fall far short of LOST’s definition of faith.

Faith for LOST is not only an acceptance of the validity and truth of things unseen and unprovable, it is the surrender of self to the service of humanity. Kate gave up self, gave up a future with Jack, to serve Claire and Aaron. Jack gave up his self, his very life, to serve the Island, and through it, all of humanity. Faith on the Island of Mittelos is the kind of faith Rick and Ilsa expressed, the sort of faith for which John Paul Merton and John Gillespie Magee, Jr. gave their lives. It is the type of love that requires no tit-for-tat reciprocity. John Locke, at the time wheel, did not ask what was in it for him when Christian Shephard, the Island’s representative, told Locke he would have to die, that he was to become the “sacrifice the Island demands”. He accepted his fate, because he was the Island’s truest and most humble servant. He believed in (we without his brand of faith might say he “loved”) the Island.

The Final Journey

Much will be written about Jack Shephard in years to come. He was one of the most lovingly-created heroes in fiction, and the entire story of LOST will transcend time and culture. This is not “Soylent Green”, a film that really should not be watched without having first consumed at least a quart of hearty ale, and definitely not viewed by anyone who did not live through the seventies. LOST is more akin to Star Trek in its universal and enduring appeal, in its courageous exploration of core human values.

Jack brought people together. They worked together, lived together. “If we can’t live together, we will die alone.” Jack’s work save people, saved the Island society, saved the Island itself. Before Jack first woke on the Island, the shepherd who watched over Mittelos called the dog, Vincent. “Come here,” Christian said. “Good boy…. I need you to go find my son. He’s over there in that bamboo forest, unconscious. I need you to go wake him up…. He has work to do.” Three years later (or thirty years later), Jack’s work completed, the Island again summoned Vincent. The Island’s saviour, the most deserving of the Island’s servants, could not possibly be the one who would die alone. So Vincent, humble servant that he was, accompanied Jack on the last moments of his journey through life. It was an ending fitting to the man, fitting to his faith in things known but unseen, of things unprovable but undeniable. Jack Shephard, man of faith, died in the place for which he had given his life. It was the final apologia pro vita fidei, the best way to complete a story grounded in the highest ideals of our shared humanity.

Matthew Fox’s Reaction To His First Emmy Nomination

SL-LOST — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 00:18:36 +0000

Via USA Today’s Bill Keveney:

Matthew Fox sees his Emmy nomination as an excellent reason for one last Lost get-together.

“It gives me a great excuse to go to (the award ceremony) and hang out with all the people I did the show with. We’ll have a little reunion and raise a few glasses of champagne to what we did for six years,” says Fox, nominated in the lead actor category for the ABC drama.

He was especially proud that Lost received a best drama nomination for its final season, the heavily scrutinized culmination of a TV phenomenon. “I think the show had created enormous expectations this season and somehow we met or even exceeded them in some respects,” says Fox, who left Hawaii for the mainland with his family only a week ago. “Seeing the show getting the nomination and (executive producers) Damon (Lindelof) and Carlton (Cuse) and Jack Bender and the other actors getting nominated, I feel great about it.”

The Measure of an Island: Unifying the Cultural, Mythical, and Emotional Aspects of LOST by Pearson Moore

SL-LOST — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 21:28:22 +0000

Did Jack Shephard’s death have meaning?

I believe we might answer this question with any of four different responses. First, some may agree with the Man in Black: Jack’s death had no meaning because the Island has no value. It’s “just a damn island”. Second, a few might say Jack’s death meant something to him, but not to anyone else. Maybe the Island was more than “just a damn island” or maybe not, but in the end, it was not worth sacrificing a life. On the other hand, some may contend Jack’s death was meaningful precisely because he achieved his life’s goal, regardless of any value that may attach to the Island.

I believe the fourth possible response is the one most of us would offer: Jack’s death had meaning because the Island has intrinsic value.

An analysis of the question will reveal that Jack’s death was the dénouement for the cultural and mythical facets of LOST, and was the only conceivable segue to the emotional catharsis inside the church. In Jack’s death LOST brings the plot to its natural conclusion, unifying every aspect of culture, mythos, and character, and ensures LOST’s value as enduring literary masterpiece.

Proof of an Island’s Worth

What is the Island’s value?

We know what Jack did. In killing the Smoke Monster and in reigniting the Light, we consider that Jack accomplished deeds worthy of a man’s life. This is what we believe. Is any proof necessary?

If the Island has no intrinsic value, Jack’s final mission was irrelevant. At the very most, we could grant that Jack had a good heart and he achieved a goal having great personal meaning, but his sacrifice achieved nothing of tangible value for anyone else. The only intangible we might be obliged to surrender is Jack’s effect on Kate. Perhaps she was taken by the good doctor and his quixotic quest, meaningless as it was.

Is any proof necessary?

I believe LOST provided a proof of the Island’s value, and I believe this was achieved in the only way a real proof can be offered. We need to consider observational data before we can delve into a formal proof, but we shall indeed develop a rigorously logical proof, and in doing this we shall come to understand the value of the Island.

Observations of Island Behaviour

He found joy in the rain.

While everyone else scrambled for shelter, John Locke reveled in the rain, embraced it with arms outstretched, soaked it in as if it were wet manna from heaven. It was the first rain on the Island. We didn’t know the significance then, but we quickly learned. Rain was the harbinger of darkness, of death, of things frightful and terrible beyond human understanding. Yet Locke found his greatest peace in these moments of communion with his Constant, the Island.

It was during that first rain that the Monster appeared. It tore the pilot out of the cockpit of the plane, crushed him, whipped him around until his neck snapped, and dropped him into the trees. Unable to kill Jack or Kate, it terrorised them, bellowed out from the forest with blasting screech and crash of thunder.

Locke was the second man to confront the Monster.

I remember the strong emotions I felt the first time I saw Walkabout. There was Locke, knife drawn, looking up at the Monster that had surely come to kill him, just as it had killed the pilot. I felt dread at the coming revelation of the poor man’s mangled body when the story resumed after commercial break. Jack and Kate and the others on the beach were trying to figure out how to survive, and Locke was not with them. When would they discover his bloodied corpse?

Locke was blooded when he returned, but it was the blood of a victorious hunt. He grabbed the dead boar from around his shoulders and dropped it to the ground. The survivors would eat.

The revelation at the end of Walkabout is considered the first miracle. Locke, paralysed, consigned to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, lay on the beach immediately after the crash. He looked down at his toes and saw them move at his unspoken command. He lifted himself up, first on one knee, then on both feet, feeling the weight of his body in his legs for the first time in four years. Of course he would stretch out his arms in the rain. Of course. This was the Island that had cured him.

But the healing of John Locke’s paralysis was not the first miracle. The first miracle occurred when a man looked into the black smoke, looked into the eye of the Island. He looked up not in fear, but in awe. For what he saw was not a terrible Monster, but something no one else on the Island would understand without undergoing the ordeals of a lifetime.

The first miracle was John’s communion with the Island.

This is the most-quoted conversation anywhere in the last six years:

LOCKE: I’m an ordinary man, Jack, meat and potatoes, I live in the real world. I’m not a big believer in magic. But this place is different. It’s special. The others don’t want to talk about it because it scares them. But we all know it. We all feel it. Is your white rabbit a hallucination? Probably. But what if everything that happened here, happened for a reason? What if this person that you’re chasing is really here?
JACK: That’s impossible.
LOCKE: Even if it is, let’s say it’s not.
JACK: Then what happens when I catch him?
LOCKE: I don’t know. But I’ve looked into the eye of this island. And what I saw was beautiful.

Locke walked, watched with a smile as his wheelchair burned in purifying flame. He was a man reborn, a tabula rasa free to make himself anew, free to plot his own walkabouts, free to chase white rabbits with Jack and hatches with Boone.

Before Oceanic 815, Rose Nadler was dying of cancer. The Island cured her, of course. We were not surprised by this knowledge, for we knew already that the Island cures. Thus is the Island. The miracle for Rose was the return of her husband, the man who meant more to her than life or death. Theirs was the only relationship always intact over six years, even in the midst of deadly attacks and jungle treks and time shifts across the centuries. Their relationship was the sign of yet another of the Island’s strange capabilities: Communion.

The Island moved people around the globe and across time.

The entire Island moved from place to place across the oceans, back and forth through time, even to the point that occasionally an event in the future could only be referenced in a time traveler’s past. Ben jumped months into the future, Locke was displaced three years. Those on the Island moved from past to future and back again, stopping in the 1950s, back to the 2000s, and making a brief visit to a time prior to the 1860s before finally stopping in 1974. The relentless time travel took its toll on everyone. Charlotte Lewis, her consciousness no longer able to keep up with her body, finally died of time-shift-induced stress.

The air they breathed, the light through the trees, the sunlight in the sky was affected. “The light… it’s strange out here, isn’t it? It’s kind of like, it doesn’t… it doesn’t scatter quite right.” The very fabric of spacetime around the Island was bent. A fifty-kilometre-per-minute rocket launched from a ship ten kilometres away might take an hour to reach the Island when it should have completed its journey in seconds. A twenty-minute trip to a freighter might take a day and a half. A surgeon, dead from a knife wound to the neck, might wash up in the waves a day before he dies.

The Island heals and it destroys. It transports people and things through space and time, and it can move itself, to places far, to times long ago. It unleashes electromagnetic energy of such force as to pull airplanes from the sky. It contains within its bowels forces of such magnitude that not even the detonation of a nuclear bomb can surpass its strength.

Such abilities are not localised wonders to be exploited and directed. Such powers are not controlled. They control. They exercise their own need to integrate into things even greater than themselves.

The Island is not an entity subject to containment or detached study or exploitation for personal gain. It is the world’s umbilical cord, attaching the entire planet to the richness of forces beyond description. It is the time merchant’s scale in which good and evil, freedom and responsibility, past and future, will and humility are balanced, guarded, nurtured, and rendered into forms suitable to the human spirit and to the greater good.

The crash of Flight 815 was no accident or random effect of magnetic energy. The crash had a greater purpose than the death of innocents and the suffering of survivors.

LOCKE: Do you really think all this is an accident — that we, a group of strangers survived, many of us with just superficial injuries? Do you think we crashed on this place by coincidence — especially, this place? We were brought here for a purpose, for a reason, all of us. Each one of us was brought here for a reason.
JACK: Brought here? And who brought us here, John?
LOCKE: The Island. The Island brought us here. This is no ordinary place, you’ve seen that, I know you have. But the Island chose you, too, Jack. It’s destiny.

Observations of Human Behaviour

The Temple Master, Dogen, told Jack he must give Sayid the green pill. Jack demanded to know the contents of the capsule. When Dogen replied only that he had to give Sayid the medicine, “for the sake of his life”, Jack countered, “He already died.” This seemed a rare and strange place for a healer to place himself. Jack appeared to be hoisting a list of ingredients to a higher plane than Sayid’s life. Dogen expressed concern about Sayid’s “infection”, while Jack insisted on broadening his knowledge of herbal medicines, and all the while, a man who miraculously regained consciousness and complete healing of wounds was dismissed as one who “already died.” The strange discussion seemed askew, the priorities grossly misplaced.

But this was not the only instance of Sayid’s life being accorded less value than abstract concepts. When Jack presented Sayid with the green pill, Sayid’s response was Biblical: “I only care about who I trust. So if you want me to take that pill, Jack, I will.”

This was breathtaking in its audacity. Neither Sayid nor Jack knew the contents of the pill. Sayid placed unrestrained faith in Jack, and now a crushing burden fell on the healer. This was no longer abstract. Sayid might have died if he took the pill–no one except Dogen knew. The only useful question at that point in the episode: What was Jack Shephard made of? What value did he place on life, on trust, on knowledge?

As I watched Jack throw the pill in his mouth and swallow, my jaw dropped open and I could not process the event through my shock. The sequence of events remained askew. The problem was not that Jack was placing higher value on Sayid’s life than his own. The problem for me, as I struggled to make sense of this most intense scene, was that Jack was not placing greater value on Sayid’s life. Something else, apparently something carrying an importance more profound even than life or death, was at play.

Jack couldn’t give Sayid the pill. He was planning to do so. He had every intention of doing so. He resolved to tell Sayid the complete truth, and that was what he did. But then Sayid said those words: “I care only about who I trust. So if you want me to take that pill, Jack, I will.”

The Book of Ruth in the Hebrew Bible relates a story about a pagan woman named Ruth who shows kindness to a Hebrew woman named Naomi. When it is time for them to go their separate ways, Naomi encourages Ruth to return to her pagan village.

“Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”

But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.”

Ruth just gave up everything: family, village, her former gods, everything she ever knew-turned her back on all of it, and gave herself over to Naomi and her God. Ruth discovered something of greater value than even her own life.

Jack couldn’t give Sayid the pill. Not because he valued Sayid’s life. He certainly did value the man’s life, and his own. But life did not carry greatest value in this scene. Jack was able to risk his own life by swallowing that pill because he placed greater importance on something other than his own life. Jack placed highest value on the trust Sayid had placed in him.

Sayid and Jack placed greater value on their trust of each other than on their own lives.

This was audacious. Rare. This was story that burned deep into the soul, engaged every faculty of spirit and sense and wonder.

With the intensity of this scene we began to get a glimpse into the innermost core of LOST. This was not a show about good versus evil. It was not about free will versus determinism. It was not about time travel or electromagnetic anomalies or spacetime displacement. It was about our very humanity. It was about who we are at the very centre of our conscious selves.

The Island changes people.

This place establishes relationships with people, the most spectacular example being John Locke. Locke knew instinctively where to find wild boar, the Nigerian plane, and countless other people, places, and events. Far exceeding young Widmore’s expectations or understanding, he tracked the boy through the jungle to Richard’s camp in the early 1950s. He found the Swan Hatch, the Pearl, and the Flame. Locke could predict the weather and events past and future. The Island changed Jack and Sayid. We have seen numerous examples of individuals and groups with a sixth sense about the Island: Rose, Hurley, and Walter, and to lesser extents Ben, Richard, Boone, and Sayid. The Others, through the leadership of Jacob and his liaison, Richard, were somewhat tuned into the Island. Even certain members of the Dharma Initiative seem to have enjoyed some extra-dimensional understanding. Paul and his wife, Amy (later to become Amy Goodspeed), owned an ankh necklace, for example, which may have connected them with some of the earliest cultures on the Island or the Island itself.

The Ontological Proof

This entire section may seem a bit dry to those without strong interest in the rigours of formal logic. However, the exposition provided here is necessary to a complete understanding of the Island’s critical importance, as will be revealed later in the article.

Nine hundred years ago a professor of natural philosophy, Anselm of Canterbury, proposed a simple but radical idea. The gist of his argument was that logic contained within its very structure the ability to establish a firm link with reality. Here is what St. Anselm wrote:

1. If I am thinking of the Greatest Being Thinkable, then I can think of no being greater.

1a. If it is false that I can think of no being greater, it is false I am thinking of the Greatest

Being Thinkable.

2. Being is greater than not being.

3. If the being I am thinking of does not exist, then it is false that I can think of no being

greater.

4. If the being I am thinking of does not exist, then it is false that I am thinking of the

Greatest Being Thinkable.

Conclusion: If I am thinking of the Greatest Being Thinkable, then I am thinking of a being that exists.

According to this argument, the Greatest Being exists. Anselm is speaking here of the Creator, the Deity worshipped by Muslims, Jews, and Christians. A full discussion of St. Anselm’s Proof is given here: http://www.princeton.edu/~grosen/puc/phi203/ontological.html

To those not schooled in logical argument, the conclusion seems groundless, even childish. If you reject St. Anselm’s argument, you are in good company: A doctor of the Roman Catholic Church, in fact the Church’s recognised expert in all matters theological, St. Thomas Aquinas, rejected the ontological proof. Unfortunately, Thomas Aquinas lacked the philosophical understanding to prove that Anselm’s Proof was groundless. The proof was eventually knocked down, but not until the work of Immanuel Kant in the late eighteenth century, almost seven hundred years after Anselm. It would be another two hundred years, but one man, a philosopher at the University of Notre Dame, fitted St. Anselm’s argument with a bulletproof jacket.

Alvin Plantinga, Professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame, appealed to modal logic to establish an essentially irrefutable proof of the existence of the Creator. The proof relies on Modal Axiom S5, which states that when confronted by multiple (stacked) modal operators, only the final operator is definitive as qualifier. In layman’s terms, any qualifier other than the definitive qualifier is more or less unnecessary fluff that can be removed from the argument. In mathematical terms the axiom is stated this way:

Or in verbal argument: Possibly Necessarily P implies Necessarily P.

Here is Professor Plantinga’s proof:

It is proposed that a being has maximal excellence in a given possible world W if and only if it is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good in W; and
It is proposed that a being has maximal greatness if it has maximal excellence in every possible world.
Maximal greatness is possibly exemplified. That is, it is possible that there be a being that has maximal greatness. (Premise)
Therefore, possibly it is necessarily true that an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good being exists.
By Axiom S5, possibly is it necessarily true is replaced by necessarily true.
Therefore, it is necessarily true that an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good being exists.
Therefore, an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good being exists.

A formal discussion of Plantinga’s Proof, in his own words, is provided here: http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/02-03/01w/readings/plantinga.html

The Inadequacy of Logical Proof

St. Anselm and Professor Plantinga are great thinkers, but I doubt even they would insist that their proofs represent actionable bases for life decisions. Does even a single person exist who has said, “I was an atheist until I read Plantinga, but he opened my eyes to the Truth, and now I believe.”? I very much doubt that any such person exists. If she does exist, there is probably something a bit strange about her, something most of us would consider not necessarily attractive.

Those the Island called felt an attraction greater than the pull of any magnet. Even years later, try as he might, Jack Shephard could not deny the Island’s persuasive voice. Neither could Jack find comfort in the science and logic that had been his strength since earliest youth. A full examination of the capabilities and limitations of science is essential to understanding LOST.

The argument in this article is contingent on a sound understanding of the true limits of science. Those who have not read my previous articles should familiarise themselves with my understanding of logic and science as recorded in my article on Locke (Read the sections headed “The Limits of Logic”, “Deception”, and “Man of Science” at http://www.sl-lost.com/2010/02/14/impartial-risk-cultural-musings-on-the-resurrection-of-john-locke/), and also the more recent article on the culture of LOST (Read the sections headed “A Place Beyond Science” and “Time-traveling Bunnies” at http://www.sl-lost.com/2010/06/01/humanitas-insulae-the-culture-of-lost-by-pearson-moore/).

The inadequacy of science to discovery of reality was examined at length during Season Two of LOST.

There are no coincidences on the Island. Perhaps Jack understood this, but when he went searching for reasons, he used the tools of science to guide him. To his surprise and his torment, science was unable to reveal any of the recurring, non-coincidental truths of the Island.

JACK: No. It’s not real. Look, you want to push the button, you do it yourself.
LOCKE: If it’s not real, then what are you doing here, Jack? Why did you come back? Why do you find it so hard to believe?
JACK: Why do you find it so easy?
LOCKE: It’s never been easy!

Faith is more difficult than science, because faith is the only means by which we can make sense of our connection with reality. Science can deliver only models–human fabrications–of reality, which can never account for the infinite variability of that which is real.

The Essential Argument

I intend to boil this argument down, render it in terms immediately accessible to anyone reading, in a way I hope will force every reader to make a choice.

Not a single person reading this article bases her life on logic. I offer a simple proof. If anyone reading this article is willing to die for the truths contained in “Advanced Euclidean Geometry” by Dr. Alfred S. Posamentier, published by Key College, 2002, please leave a detailed comment at the end of this article. I imagine I’ll receive a few prank comments along these lines, but I sincerely doubt anyone so responding will be able to do so without at least a smirk on her face.

Why is no one willing to die for these truths? “Advanced Euclidean Geometry” contains solid mathematical logic, good science that has stood well the test of two and a half millennia. If science is truly necessary to our understanding of the world, if we literally cannot live without it, shouldn’t it be something worth dying for?

Is anything worth dying for?

All of the men in this photograph believe the soldier whose body lies inside the coffin died for a reason. Not one of these men wished his death, but every one of them would say his was a worthy death. He will be honoured now and forever as a man who gave his life for his country, for the world, and for the greater good of humankind. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, but even more fitting to die for the good of everyone living.

Many of us would not hesitate to give our lives to protect our spouse, our children, or friends. “There is no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend.” Many might consider it axiomatic that a human life has greater value than any idea, such as the logical truths contained in Dr. Posamentier’s mathematics textbook. Is human life always accorded greatest value, or can we identify instances in which an idea is found to have greater worth?

This is the oath taken by officers in the United States military:

“I, [NAME], do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me…”

The soldier making fealty to the above oath is not swearing to protect human beings, national boundaries or other territory, the wealth of her country, or trade routes. She is not swearing to protect the President of the United States or even the Vice President or the Postmaster General. She is swearing to protect–to give her life if necessary–for an idea. She is swearing to protect the Constitution of the United States.

I want to believe that if I were forced to make a choice, I would choose to give up my life rather than surrender the tenets of my faith tradition. I would die for my faith. With Mohandas Gandhi, though, I hope that I would never kill in the name of my religion.

It seems to me likely that many reading this article would be willing to sacrifice their lives for the tenets of Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, or Christianity. To those of us who believe, the articles of faith are of course more than just ideas, more than facts–they are Truths. But from the point of view of an objective outside observer, our beliefs are nothing more than dusty old words in a book–ideas from long ago. Yet millions of us–perhaps billions of us–would give up our lives rather than profess something less than the full truth of our faith.

Proof in Faith

Jack Shephard made a conscious decision to surrender everything–to sever all ties with friends and loved ones, to give up health and happiness–even give up his life, if necessary–to protect the Island. We cannot doubt that he placed great value on the Island, but what is the Island’s true worth?

I contend that we have all the proof we need of the Island’s value. No mathematical or logical proofs exist. But we know that any such proof would be meaningless. No one in this world worships at the altar of St. Anselm’s Ontological Proof. We worship at altars based on the deeper proofs of faith, those arguments that defy categorisation according to the laws of logic, mathematics, or physics. LOST demolished the idea that science could adequately respond to the phenomena present on the Island. The programme positioned John Locke’s faith, trust, and communion with the Island as the ideals upon which any effective Island society would have to be based.

Can anyone prove, with rigorous scientific logic, that the Island cured John Locke’s paralysis? Can anyone, using the laws of physics, prove the direct causal connection between the Island’s properties and the fact that no one, other than Benjamin Linus, was ever found to have succumbed to cancer? Can anyone prove, with full adherence to the laws of mathematics, that the Source is in fact the umbilical, the connection between the world we understand through our senses and the world known only to the Creator?

I contend we have more than sufficient proof, but it is proof of the type that cannot be squeezed into the artificial constraints of human logic. For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who do not believe, no proof is possible. Logical proof requires an almost endless chain of custody going back to an absolute authority. But since we are speaking of absolutes upon which there can be no definitive agreement, there is no authority to whom we might appeal in order that all become satisfied.

Symbolism of the Cork

The cuneiform symbols on the cork stone have been traced to earliest Mesopotamia, to the Sumerians of 5000 to 10,000 years ago, according to Lostpedia and other sources on the Internet. The intention is to indicate the cork stone is as old as civilisation itself. The cork stone, then, represents all of human civilisation. It is through civilisation–through this cork stone–that the unbridled, terrible power of the Divine is modulated. Without civilisation, the power of the Creator is unchanneled. We might think of the sun, giver of heat and life. Without the modulating effect of Earth’s atmosphere, there could be no life, because the full effect of high-energy solar radiation would destroy every nucleic acid, every amino acid, and all living things would die in very short order. But the atmosphere is there to modulate, to transform destructive cosmic and solar rays into life-giving heat and light. In the same way, the cork stone transforms the angry red energy of the Source into life-giving warmth and Light.

Civilisation–the systematic embodiment of trust, love, faith, and self-sacrifice in entire populations–is the only mechanism by which raw power can be transformed into a basis for human existence anywhere on the planet. The Island is the place where civilisation and the Divine meet. It is the final guarantor and full statement of our humanity.

LOST is about the essence of who we are as civilised human beings. The show centres on our humanity, on the essentials of culture. It is not about good versus evil, for we are both good and evil. It is not about free will versus destiny, for we are all free and we all share a final destiny. LOST is neither adventure story nor study in psychology. LOST is about the mature integration of body, mind, and soul. LOST describes the adventure of being fully engaged–immersed-in our humanity, yet having abundant faculties of temperance, judgment, and prudence to execute responsibilities with mature bearing, confidence, and valor.

What is the Island’s value?

We know what Jack did. In killing the Smoke Monster and in reigniting the Light, we consider that Jack accomplished deeds worthy of a man’s life. This is what we believe. Is any proof necessary?

Pearson Moore
June 6, 2010

Humanitas Insulae: The Culture of LOST by Pearson Moore

SL-LOST — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 13:05:41 +0000

A single question fascinated us for six years.

One question, posed over six seasons, in each of 121 episodes, in thousands of scenes, the query was always the same. Thirty-five characters tried to answer the question; twenty-one of them died in the attempt.

The scope was measured not in years but in millennia, not in lives lost but in the hundreds of souls sacrificed. Time itself had no meaning, for those asking the question and seeking the answer could move about unrestrained by the forward march of the clock. Each character formed the question into unique words. For Pierre Chang, the question centred around the origin of exotic matter. Charles Widmore wondered how the place might be exploited. The question in its most essential form was simple:

What is this Island?

Paradise

Life is what we make of it. One couple witnessed the anger and fights and bloodshed and decided none of it made any sense. Rose and Bernard found a quiet corner of the Island and built a hut. Occasionally one of the zealots would happen upon their camp, trying to talk sense into these contented people. The visitor would prattle on about this or that imminent catastrophe. Rose and Bernard listened patiently, even if the visitor really had nothing to say.

JULIET: Rose, we just need to know which way the Dharma Barracks are from here so we can stop Jack, or you’re gonna be dead. We all will.

BERNARD: So we die. We just care about being together. That’s all that matters in the end.

The wise old couple knew more about the Island than Juliet and all of the Others combined. Not one of the almost daily fights on the Island required their presence. No one anywhere suffered injustice because these two gentle souls refused to raise a hand in violence. And when their time came, they found out they had held the secret of life all along. What would have happened if everyone else, or even a small handful of them, had adopted the Nadler attitude toward life and the Island? Could Ben, living in such a blissful state as theirs, ever have plunged a knife into Jacob’s chest? Would the Island ever have known discord or death?

Rose was never a candidate for any position of authority, and yet the Island cured her of cancer. Jacob had the power to bestow eternal life. Could it be that Richard Alpert was not the only resident of this Pacific paradise who had been granted immortality?

Hell

“This place is death.”

Rose and Bernard knew the secret of life, but this was not the only facet of their character that allowed them to enjoy paradise on earth. Others, not as fortunate, paid with their emotions and their psychological well-being. Some ended up paying for the Island’s unique powers with their very lives.

The Island had the ability to heal, but it could also induce suffering and death. Charlotte Lewis was among the unfortunates who could not physically endure the Island. Hers was not an unusual case. Only a small percentage of those brought to the Island survived more than a few weeks. Danielle Rousseau and Claire Littleton outlasted their contemporaries, but gave up their sanity to do so. Of those who arrived on the freighter, onl y Miles Straum and Frank Lapidus survived. Everyone from the tail section of Flight 815 ended up dying, with the notable exception of Bernard Nadler.

The Island was a living hell for almost everyone. By the time Daniel Faraday returned from Ann Arbor with a plan for re-setting all of their lives to a time before the Island, most of them were immediately receptive to the idea. After the leaders of the Dharma Initiative revealed their true allegiances to power and exploitation, every one of the survivors joined the plan to drop the nuclear bomb on top of the electromagnetic anomaly.

A Game

“Two players. Two sides. One is light … one is dark.”

Life is what we make of it. Some players in the game of life have the power to make decisions about life and death not only for themselves, but for anyone in the vicinity. Jacob didn’t wait for people to accidentally make their way to the Island. Sometimes they just needed a little push, and no matter where they were on the globe, Jacob appeared and gave the little push that would send them to the Island.

The Game was more important than life. Hundreds of people died in the game, but Jacob continued to look into the lives of thousands around the world, seeking individuals he deemed strong enough, with depth of character sufficient to endure the travails of the Game. He valued human life, but he valued the well-lived life even more.

SAWYER: Tell me something, Jacob. Why do I gotta be punished for your mistake? What made you think you could mess with my life? I was doin’ just fine ’til you dragged my ass to this damn rock.

JACOB: No, you weren’t. None of you were. I didn’t pluck any of you out of a happy existence. You were all flawed. I chose you because you were like me. You were all alone. You were all looking for something that you couldn’t find out there. I chose you because you needed this place as much as it needed you.

Sawyer didn’t protest enough in his only conversation with the backgammon master. It was his last chance to get answers, but for some reason he chose not to ask. The important question was finally asked and answered, but this event had to wait until a conversation between the new Protector and his freshly-appointed “Number Two”. The question is simple:

How is anyone on earth different from the Candidates?

Very few people on earth would ever claim they are not flawed, that they are not “looking for something”. An unbiased scrutiny of any life would find the person lacking in the way she had decided to respond to the crises and unjust events and ordinary turns of life. All of us at one time or another–and most of us on a daily basis–make judgments and take actions we consider favourable to ourselves, regardless of the way our personal biases and actions affect those around us. We hurt others so as to come out ahead. We are all selfish. We are all flawed. We are all “looking for something”.

The Rules of the Game

I believe it is essential to point out that the Man In Black had no name, and he was given no name by design. At the very least, even if he had a name, this knowledge was intentionally withheld from us. A year and a half ago, in audition scripts for the character that eventually came to be called the Man In Black, the character was referred to as Samuel. We might reasonably ask why such an important character was never given a name.

This is no small matter, and I believe this conscious decision on the part of the writers goes a long way toward understanding the way in which we are meant to look at the series as a whole.

The creators of the series elevated the importance of the character by plucking the show’s first Emmy winner from the role he had given award-winning depth and substance. I intend no offence to any of the other actors, but polls over the years have shown Terry O’Quinn the favourite actor on the show. The role of the nameless man was assigned to the series’ most capable actor, but even then the character was never given a name.

I cannot tell you why Benjamin Linus was dispatched to kill the suicidal John Locke in a Los Angeles hotel room. I cannot tell you why Aaron and Walt were deemed critical to the story, but by the end of the story were almost-forgotten details. I can make a few guesses here, but the fact is we were not told, and we do have to guess. I can tell you that some of these unresolved details have contributed to a certain level of dissatisfaction, even disappointment, in the way the series ended. But I realise now some of that dissatisfaction was intentional. The writers intended a certain level of dissatisfaction. They wanted us to seek answers.

Answers

What are the true Rules of the Game? Many answers apply, most of them are similar or identical, but the only answers that have any enduring value are those provided by faith, or by grace through faith, or by trusting in the Tanakh, or by surrendering to the Creator and His Prophet, Mohammed, may peace and blessings be upon him. The terminology and rubrics of dialogue and faith vary from one religious tradition to another, but they are all surprisingly similar.

Darlton are not telling us that we must launch into immediate studies of any of the world’s great religions, or that we must experience spiritual epiphany and conversion of the heart in order to understand LOST. But they have imbedded into the very fabric of the series critical markers that guide us in our understanding. A hierarchy of values has been created in these six years. The systemic placement of values gives us a route to questions and responses otherwise obscure. This hierarchy can be applied to ferret important answers out of critical scenes. I intend to illuminate some of these markers on the road to understanding. The questions remain, but our responses do not constitute guesses. Rather, they constitute the hopes of our heart, the desires of our soul. Our response is not the stuff of guesswork or theories. Our answers are the response to John Locke, stretching out his arms and lifting his face to the rain come down from heaven. Our answers are the response to Jack Shephard, standing ankle-deep in sacred waters, hands clasped in humility, lips chanting words of invocation. Our answers are the response to faith.

A Place Beyond Science

Perhaps no one among us can speak with authority on a subject as broad as “science”. The only exception might be “Dr. Science”:

“Ask Dr. Science. He knows more than you do.”

Dan Coffey of Duck’s Breath Mystery Theatre took the ludicrous notion that any one person could speak on behalf of “science” and turned this impossible conceit into one of the most amusing series on radio. No one can speak for the diverse set of logic-based disciplines to which we apply the broad term “science”.

I make no claim to be able to speak for other scientists. However, I am a scientist, and I have been working professionally in laboratories across the North American continent, Canada and the United States, for the past thirty-four years. My deepest expertise is in a sub-discipline of purification process design, but I have led teams in analytical development, pharmaceutical discovery, late-stage formulation development, early-stage research in various fields, interfacial and surfactant behaviour, and protein purification. While I may not understand the nuances of much of science, I have been entrusted over the decades with ferreting out various types of natural behaviour that might be exploited for the development of life-saving drugs and low-cost natural supplements beneficial to happiness and health. Thanks to my efforts and the good efforts of colleagues, the cost of taxol was reduced from over a hundred dollars per gram to less than ten dollars per gram. You can walk into any supermarket in North America and purchase, at very low cost, a bilberry or blueberry extract that will greatly improve your body’s ability to ward off colds and other ailments. I hold over a dozen patents on the technology related to berry extraction and purification. I am no expert on “science”, but I have been a practitioner, and I speak from that perspective.

For a more complete discussion of the limitations of science and their application to understanding LOST, please see my article on John Locke (http://www.sl-lost.com/2010/02/14/impartial-risk-cultural-musings-on-the-resurrection-of-john-locke/) under the headings “The Limits of Logic”, “Deception”, “Man of Science”, and “The Nature of Evil”.

Time-traveling Bunnies

PIERRE CHANG: In our first demonstration, we will attempt to shift the test subject 100 milliseconds ahead in four-dimensional space. For the briefest… of moments, the animal will seem to disappear…
LOCKE: Hey. Uh… was he talking about what I think he was talking about?
BEN: If you mean time-travelling bunnies, then yes.
LOCKE: You do know that he said specifically not to put anything metal in here.
[Ben stares at Locke for a second, then gives an exasperated nod and turns back to the task of filling the chamber with metal objects].

Benjamin Linus is no man of science, but he does understand quite well the limitations inherent to science. He ignores the prohibitions regarding the placement of metallic objects inside the time chamber because he knows the injunction is based on nothing more than a feeble understanding of the nature of the phenomenon the Dharma scientists studied. Pierre Chang dared approach no closer than his time chamber. He had seen x-ray images of what lay beneath the Orchid Station. He knew civilisations from ancient times had manipulated space and time to extents he would never be able to duplicate.

FOREMAN: There’s something in there. And the only way to get to it is to lay charges here and here and blast through it and take a look–
CHANG: Under no circumstances! This station is being built here because of its proximity to what we believe to be an almost limitless energy. And that energy, once we can harness it correctly, it’s going to allow us to manipulate time.

FOREMAN: [Chuckles] Right. Okay, so, what? We’re gonna go back and kill Hitler?
CHANG: Don’t be absurd. There are rules, rules that can’t be broken.
FOREMAN: So what do you want me to do?
CHANG: You’re gonna do nothing. If you drill even 1 centimeter further, you risk releasing that energy. If that were to happen… [Chang looks at the fallen workman and the blood all over his face.] …God help us all.

For twenty years the Dharma Initiative controlled most of the Island. But never during that time did even the most adventurous among the scientists attempt to unravel the full mystery of the Island’s underworld. Stuart Radzinsky, using the full force of the science at his disposal, came closest to unlocking the Island’s mysteries, but his experiment failed in a most spectacular manner, illustrating again the limitations of science.

Science is limited in the behaviour it is allowed to posit and explore. Since logic is a small, man-made, artificial construct, it follows that science is unable to study and develop models for most of the reality we interact with on a daily basis. Pierre Chang would not go within fifty metres of the Light, could not go within fifty metres of the Light, because not a single observation in the history of science could explain for him the true nature of the Light. Benjamin Linus could approach the Light, not fearlessly, but with a proper attitude of humility. He knew of the Light’s power, and he knew that power was not anything that would ever be catalogued or studied or rendered as model by any discipline within science.

Ben Linus knew the experiments at the Orchid Station could only scratch the surface of the Island’s capabilities. The Dharma Initiative made bunnies travel hundreds of a second through time. With the ancient wheel far underneath the Orchid, Ben could travel across the globe and across months, years, or even centuries, far exceeding the feeble capabilities of Alvar Hanso’s scientific corps. But time travel, too, barely scratched the surface of the Island’s capabilities. Ben knew Jacob’s Number Two, Richard, was ageless, made that way by Jacob, whose powers were in turn granted by the Island.

Most of reality is unknowable to science. The person most fitted for life on the Island was the one who understood this intuitively. John Locke was a man of faith, and because of his deep trust in the Island, he understood her better than anyone, better even than Jacob or the Man in Black.

A Cork

The Island knew no greater authority than Jacob, son of a Roman shipwreck survivor named Claudia. Jacob was given Protector status by the Island’s former Protector, the woman who raised Jacob and his brother. Jacob knew the Smoke Monster obtained its power from the mixture of water and light in the illuminated cave. As long as the Light shone in the cave, the Smoke Monster would be unable to leave the Island. Jacob understood the position of Protector as more than anything the Guardian of the Cork. He explained this to Richard and to Jack and impressed upon them the absolute necessity of preventing the Monster from ever leaving the Island. He was, in Temple Master Dogen’s words, “evil incarnate”. Allowing him free reign in the outside world would lead to more than an exponential increase in suffering. The consequences were nothing less than the complete destruction of all human life. This was because the only way for the Monster to leave the Island was by snuffing out the Light. But the Light was the very stuff of life and death and rebirth; its destruction would lead to the end of life, the end of death, the end of rebirth, the end of all events and conditions making up the cycles of existence.

A Sanctuary

Life is what we make of it. Jack inherited the Island from Jacob, but he was no disciple of Smokey’s brother. From his epiphany off-Island to the detonation of Jughead and the sharing of Communion with Jacob to his final breath in this life, Jack Shephard was the unapologetic disciple of John Locke. For Jack, the Island was not a “cork”, not the Monster’s leash, not an abode of evil. The Island was, in the words of his master, “a place where miracles happen”. Jack understood something Jacob never did. The Island had a multi-dimensional character that went far beyond acting along the narrow constraints of anything that might be understood through logic and science. There was no logic to the Island, for nothing so joyous could be crammed into the narrow etiologies of human understanding. There was no science capable of modeling her abilities and powers, for nothing so terrible could be forced into a syllogistic stream.

It was Jack’s more mature understanding of the Island that allowed him to plot and execute the Smoke Monster’s destruction. Jacob knew the Smoke Monster originated in the terrible power of the Light, but he seemed not to understand, as Jack did, that the Monster was a child fed by the Light. If the Light went out, the Smoke Monster’s powers would go out with it. Jack, man of faith, trusted his understanding of the true nature of the Island, trusted in something Jacob never imagined.

The Source of Life and Death

The Light has the power to create and destroy, heal and wound. It is the source of life and death and rebirth. Jacob’s adoptive guardian expressed her limited understanding of the Light in these terms because they were the only words suitable, because the full reality of the Light is ineffable. Here there can be no logic, no science, no words to compare, contrast, or describe. The Light is at once terrible and glorious, life-giving and deadly.

It is the Source, which means it is not of this world. That which is the Source of life and death and all things cannot possibly have physical residence in the created world. We experience the Source as Light, but it is of course entirely beyond our understanding. It is the only visible sign of the Alpha, the Omega, that which was and is and will be.

The Source is the umbilical, the connection between the natural world and whatever lies beyond the realm of the senses. It is through the Source that we live and move and have our being. Each of us carries a bit of the Light inside our hearts, as Jacob’s guardian told us. When the Light goes out, we lose our identity, our connection to reality, we lose any possibility of life, death, or rebirth.

A Theory of Immortality, Cancer, and Childbirth

The Source is the guarantor of the cycles of life. The severe cyclic regulation imposed by the close proximity of the Source means that any bodily process–and especially cellular processes–will be subject to more than the normal level of control. Any cellular process that would normally proceed unchecked is kept in complete balance so close to the Source. Thus, disease cells, which normally spread quickly, are forced to spread slowly. Because they multiply slowly, the body’s defence mechanisms are able to kill the disease much more easily on the Island. So it is that wounds heal quickly in Mittelos, and disease is uncommon.

In general, any type of cellular activity that occurs rapidly is slowed or even arrested on the Island, due to the regulation of life cycles through the Source. In this special place, women and men may live forever. In scientific terms, we can understand immortality as an inhibition of the normal processes of aging and apoptosis–cellular death. Apoptosis, like the spread of disease, is a rapid process of cellular death. The Source, with its ability to regulate life processes, slows apoptosis and leads to a kind of reinvigorating of the cell. Thanks to this dampening of cellular processes, people can and do live forever in this place.

Cancer cells multiply much faster than the surrounding tissue. The Source again forces the cancer to slow and eventually the body kills the foreign cells. Cancer is virtually unknown on the Island.

When a human egg is fertilised it undergoes rapid mitosis into a zygote and then into the differentiated tissues of a fetus. Like cancer cells, the cells of the fetus multiply quickly. The Source seeks to slow this process, but the mother’s body, primed for new life, fights the unnatural dampening effect of the Source. After several months of fighting the Source–an essentially unopposable force–mother and baby are overwhelmed. The mother, her hormonal system entirely out of whack, goes into shock, and within minutes, both mother and baby are dead.

Taweret

The earliest inhabitants of Mittelos were grateful to the gods that none of their loved ones ever had to suffer disease or cancer. Human nature being what it is, though, there were no statues of thanksgiving on the Island. No days set aside to celebrate another cancer-free year. One quite prominent statue greeted every visitor to the Island. This statue was the islanders’ grand attempt at appeasing the very angry goddess of fertility, Taweret. This ancient Egyptian goddess was so angry, in fact, that every woman who ever became pregnant died several weeks before the baby was due. The unusual state of the Island that prevented disease and cured cancer was the same state that interfered with pregnancy and eventually caused the death of mother and child.

I must point out that the preceding explanations are all based in science. The observations of lack of disease, lack of cancer, and death of women during pregnancy are consistent with the hyper-regulation of cellular function by some entity on the Island. Since we know the Source to be a regulator of life, death, and rebirth, a hypothesis stating that the Source is the entity responsible for all these observed phenomena is entirely valid, and draws support from a wide variety of repeating events on the Island.

I don’t know that this is the type of explanation of Darlton had in mind. This is a nitty-gritty science-based theory, and in the end, science is going to prove inadequate to the elucidation of most phenomena on the Island. The fact that the Man in Black was not given a name, the fact that faith was demonstrated to be far superior to logic, and the fact that the Source and the Light and the Island itself were shown to be multi-dimensional entities I believe points us toward an inevitable conclusion: Some of the remaining mysteries will forever remain veiled to human logic.

I believe this was Darlton’s intention. If they had wanted us to believe all the mysteries were subject to rational understanding, that A causes B causes C therefore A causes C, they would have shown us the superiority of Dharma science, rather than belittling the hippie-scientists. If they wanted us to treat this story as a linear unfolding of black and white, good versus evil, they would not have made Jacob a flawed man, and they would have made sure every character addressed the Man in Black as “Samuel”, rather than flagrantly leaving him without appellation of any kind.

I believe many of the remaining mysteries might be unraveled with application of the type of analysis I provided for the death of women in pregnancy.

Four Theories of Life

Life is what we make of it.

During the last 150 minutes of LOST we witnessed four distinct theories of life. The proponents were the Man in Black, Rose and Bernard Nadler, Desmond Hume, and Jack Shephard. I’m going to begin the discussion with the Man in Black.

Carpe Diem

Life is tough, and no one has suffered more in this life than the Man in Black. Even before he lost his body and his soul, he was trying to find ways to rectify the injustices of life. He knew the Light to be sacred, but he knew his objective–leaving the Island–to be more important than something as simple as a light shining from underground. When did the Light ever suffer anything? The Man in Black had to live every day with the knowledge that his people were far away, somewhere across the sea. [Oh! Accident pop culture reference! And I don't even like Bobby Darin! Taking "La Mer" and turning it into "Somewhere Across the Sea" must be one of the worst musical perversions of the twentieth century]

After he came thundering out of the Cave of Light he knew he was even more tightly tethered to the Island than ever before. Extreme measures were called for. Jacob was preventing his escape and guarding the Source. Anyone aiding and abetting Jacob would be dealt with in a most severe manner. Those he killed were just ordinary, mortal human beings. And hadn’t Mother told him people were selfish and untrustworthy? They come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt. It always ends the same. People are vermin. The only suitable way to lead one’s life is to take what one can get. If a few people–or even hundreds of people die so one’s life goals might be attained, well, so be it. Take what you can get. Fulfill your dreams, and to hell with everyone else.

Crawl Under a Rock

“We don’t get involved,” Rose said. It’s a common enough sentiment. Who among us would not want to settle down in a little cabin by the sea, catch enough fish to live, steal enough Dharma tea to enjoy breakfast. They have their dog… and their walking stick to protect them. Entire songs have been written about this way of life.

I’ve built walls,
A fortress deep and mighty,
That none may penetrate.
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain.
It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

….

I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.

Rose and Bernard are not exactly the hermit of Simon and Garfunkel’s classic song. They certainly had much greater things to worry about than the pain of broken friendships. Of course I’m assuming here that neither Paul Simon nor Art Garfunkel was ever ruthlessly hunted through a Pacific island jungle by an unstoppable, unkillable cloud of smoke that travelled faster than an F16 fighter jet, or stalked by a band of evil mercenaries carrying grenades, bazookas, and 300-round-per-minute machine guns. And as for the final verse of the song, I’m not so sure. Every time something bad happened on the Island, it rained. Sure seems to me like the raindrops might constitute tears.

Rose and Bernard made a good choice. It is not merely a matter of having adopted the philosophy of “live and let live”. The plane crash threw them into an unhealthy environment. The people of Mittelos were much more likely to draw guns on each other than engage one another in pleasant conversation. The Island was reeling and swaying and moving about the ocean and zooming first back in time then forward in time, all of this incomprehensible movement hither and yon accompanied by calamities and catastrophes that literally took six years to catalogue. Rose and Bernard made a sane choice in the face of their fellow survivors’ uncontrolled, irrational, and patently insane lifestyles. Given a choice between peaceful days and nights in a hut, and being hunted by Stuart Radzinsky and his henchmen, who among us would choose to be on the receiving end of rifle fire?

Get Ye to a Nunnery

Desmond Hume had a well-defined mission. Both in Mittelos and off the Island he took upon himself the difficult task of enlightening everyone. It was a holy task, a mission aimed at bringing people together at a spiritual level. The ultimate goal was to get everyone into a church–Eloise Hawking’s Church of the Holy Lamp Post (or was it more properly called Our Lady of the Perpetual Pendulum?), but getting them there would be a complicated endeavour. Desmond would have to choose an appropriate way for all of them to recognise their spiritual connections, their Constants. He would have to provide enough enlightenment that each one could discern her connection to her Constant in both life and death.

In “The Seven Storey Mountain”, Trappist monk Thomas Merton’s autobiography, he referred to the Abbey of Gethsemane in Kentucky as the centre of the world. It was monasteries like his that held the world together, he thought. Desmond was not only helping to hold the world together, he was bringing people together spiritually, helping them see the Light.

Just outside the Cave of Light, Desmond gave Jack the good news.

DESMOND: This doesn’t matter, you know.
JACK: Excuse me?
DESMOND: Him destroying the island, you destroying him. It doesn’t matter. You know, you’re gonna lower me into that light, and I’m gonna go somewhere else. A place where we can be with the ones we love, and not have to ever think about this damn island again. And you know the best part, Jack?
JACK: What?
DESMOND: You’re in this place. You know, we sat next to each other on Oceanic 815. It never crashed. We spoke to each other. You seemed happy. You know, maybe I can find a way to bring you there, too.

For the Common Good

Desmond believed Jack could just leave the Island, forget about what may or may not happen, and settle down to a happy life with Kate. It was not to be. Jack had a calling, a responsibility he could not forsake.

“Desmond, I tried that once. There are no shortcuts, no do-overs. What happened, happened. Trust me, I know. All of this matters.”

Jack had to kill the Smoke Monster. He had to protect the Light. He knew these things from the certainty of faith and no talk of happiness and being with the ones he loved was going to sway him. If he left the Island only bad things could result. If he faced his responsibilities he at least had a chance of making things right again, and preserving the Source for the sake of the entire world.

Living life the Jack Shephard way is difficult, challenging, and at times dangerous. LOST would have us believe that this is the best life one might choose. Life is not just about enjoying good times in a hut by the sea, or spending time with those we love in a church pew. Life is about our responsibility to each other, the human need to work with others toward the Common Good.

Living and Working Together

I loved this scene. Kate was back where she belonged, a full and equal participant in the struggle to free the Island from the Man in Black. Jack would never have been able to kill him on his own. As Christian said, “Nobody does it alone, Jack. You needed all of them, and they needed you.”

I enjoyed this series more than any other I’ve seen on television. The story gave us much to consider over the past six years, and I have come nowhere near exhausting the stores of ideas the characters and situations generated. The series gave us more to ponder than any other television programme I can think of, and created some of the most detailed and complicated and human characters ever to appear on the small or large screen. Jack Shephard, in particular, was a masterful artistic creation, a kind of hero we can all believe in–have faith in.

My favourites remain Locke and Kate. Who would have thought Kate Austen would redeem herself by taking a rifle in her arms and putting a bullet in a man’s back? Both the character and the actress were under-utilised in the series, but when Kate did what she had to do, the series was better for it. John Locke ended in a way I never would have guessed. But the other characters, and especially Jack, honoured his memory and revered his wisdom. In this way John Locke’s story ended in the proper place, not hanging by a cord in a third-rate hotel, but living as mentor and example in the minds of those who protected the Island, and those who saw in Jack the fulfillment of Locke’s faith.

A Place Where Miracles Happen

I imagine a considerable length of time will pass before we see anything on television as compelling as LOST. Come September 22, the sixth anniversary of the crash, Wednesday evenings are going to be LOST evenings at the Moore household. Everyone is welcome–except Stuart Radzinsky and Charles Widmore. Remember, though, it’s BYODB (bring your own Dharma beer). We’ll supply the wild boar, coconut, and sea urchins.

So You Could Find One Another: Cultural Perfections in LOST 6.17-6.18 “The End” by Pearson Moore

SL-LOST — Tue, 25 May 2010 12:33:25 +0000

This analysis is for Ree Hines.

I write this for everyone disappointed, angered, or confused.

You invested six years. Give it one more shot. Watch the finale again; you’ll thank yourself for the effort. Enlightenment may not require a punch in the face or renewed sense in legs once dead, but it does require careful thought. Enlightenment was not intended for the already-dead inhabitants of the sideways purgatory. It was intended for us. For the thirty millions around the world, most of whom sacrificed a Monday morning to experience the end.

Give it one more shot. If anyone should be disappointed in the ending, it’s Pearson Moore. Not one of my grand predictions proved correct. But I can tell you this, after a third viewing:

LOST is the greatest piece of fiction ever presented on television.

You Can Let Go Now

“You can let go now.”

Rose’s words of comfort, her enlightened wisdom on the sideways voyage of Oceanic Flight 815, make perfect sense in the brilliant white light of the Church of the Holy Lamp Post. So, too, John Locke’s Season-One statement about his vision of the Island’s perfection. He described his first confrontation with the Smoke Monster, telling Jack, “I looked into the eye of this island, and what I saw… was beautiful.” A couple months later, talking with Eko, he described his experience as having seen a “brilliant light”.

The tomb was always empty. The tomb had to be empty. We knew, from the moment six years ago when Jack first raised the lid on that coffin in the jungle, near the cave of Adam and Eve, just south of the Light–we knew even then that Jack would never, ever find his father’s dead body. His body could not be separated from the full reality of the Island. I thought this fact was due to the mystical nature of the Island, that Christian Shephard somehow represented or was connected to the essential core of the Island. The reality of Christian Shephard was greater than the Island, though. He was connected to something more important that the lush green real estate moving hither and yon around the Pacific.

He Has Work To Do

When did Lindelof and Cuse know the ending?

I suggest the creators knew precisely the way in which the voyage would end at least in the weeks before January 28, 2008, when Mobisode #13, “So It Begins”, first aired on Verizon. If you are a casual viewer of LOST–maybe even if you consider yourself a devoted fan–you may not know what I refer to here. The “Mobisodes” were intended as non-broadcast episodes of LOST fully integrated into the canon of the show. Darlton said as much in several interviews, beginning in December, 2007.

Christian, acting on behalf of the Island and not as the representative of the Man in Black, summoned Vincent. Putting on his Doctor-Doolittle veterinary hat, the former chief of surgery gave these instructions to the white labrador retriever:

“Listen. I need you to go find my son. He’s over there–in that bamboo forest. Unconscious. I need you go wake him up. Okay? Good boy. He has work to do.”

Jack’s work, we know now, was his redemption, his reconciliation with his father, his unrestrained embrace of his Constant, Kate, his communion with the Island, his voyage from scepticism to faith, and his decision to hear Rose’s words and let go. Most of the other major characters had equally full slates. This realisation is critical to a deeper understanding of the series.

Twenty-First Century Odyssey

Did Darlton really intend that we view all the mobisodes, read Doc Jensen’s mammoth dissertations on every single episode, try to see, with Vozzek69, “Things I Noticed”, read the novels of Stephen King, the plays of Shakespeare, the philosophy of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, scrutinise and investigate the endless instances of symbolism and mirror imagery and references to literature, music, pop culture, ancient culture, religion, mythology, and history? After such a simple revelation? They’re all dead, the sideways is just purgatory. Hell, it might as well be St. Elsewhere’s snow globe, right? Wasn’t all this just a waste of the last six years of our lives?

No.

Darlton really did intend that we do a fair amount of homework. They really did intend that we spend not dozens, but hundreds, perhaps thousands of hours in trying to understand their creation.

We must understand the Iliad.

Anyone who has tried to read Homer’s masterpiece at one time or another, perhaps after the seventeenth instance of labouring through interminable lists of names of kings and sons of kings and sons of gods and sons of kings who are sons of gods–at one time or another we all have the same feeling. Why the hell am I reading this? I should just shell out five bucks for the Cliff Notes, read it, and get on with my life.

The point of Homer’s lists is not the memorisation of names. The point is that the names are connected to places and deeds, crucial locations and critical events: Kings, countries, and conflicts. They’re all related, they’re all necessary, they all inform Homer’s work. Take away those lists and there is no Iliad. The battles of the Trojan War have no significance without their relation to the men who fought, the lands they died for, the sons and fathers and flesh and blood they mourned for, their example of endurance and strength and fortitude and bearing, and all of this, every name, every relation, a connection to us, a reminder to us, an example to us of our own capacities for endurance, strength, and fortitude, proof of our shared humanity.

The fact that the coffin was empty back in Season One, that it was empty in Season Six, that in fact, it was always empty, is not the point.

The fact that all the characters in the church are dead is not the point.

The fact that we had to experience the repeated instances of misery and pain and death, again and again, on the Island, off the Island, and on the Island again–and understand the inter-relationships of leadership, life, and location before we could truly say we understand–is entirely the point. The complicated aspects of the tangled relationships provide the key to the essential message of the last six years. With Jacob, Jack, and Hurley, we must willingly imbibe the rich water-into-wine from Island streams, dine on mango and coconut, join Locke in hunting and feasting on wild boar, before we can claim to have seen, understood, and appreciated this human epic.

And What Is Good, Phaedrus?

Odysseus slaying Penelope’s suitors

We must study the Iliad and the Odyssey.

We must understand LOST.

The intention of the two statements is the same. Plato, in the dialogue named after Phaedrus, provided the rationale: “And what is well [written] and what is badly [written]-need we ask Lysias, or any other poet or orator, who ever wrote… to teach us this?”

Odysseus fought in a war, took a long, difficult voyage home, killed some men who were pestering his wife, and lived happily ever after. The End.

Jack Shephard fought to leave an island, took a long, difficult voyage back to the island, killed some evil men, and died happily in the jungle. The End.

The point of the Iliad and the Odyssey is not that Menelaus and Achilles and Ajax and Odysseus carried out great deeds in battle. The point is not that they properly mourned those who lay mangled by the bronze spear. The point is that they completed noble deeds of valour, ever aware of their station as kings of Sparta and Ithaca, as men of Greece, as examples of good and complete men. These were men who mourned those felled by the bronze spear, yes, but saw goodness and even excellence in the fact of their comrades’ pain-filled deaths. ”It is entirely seemly,” Homer told us, “for a young man killed in battle to lie mangled by the bronze spear. In his death all things appear fair.” The Iliad is not an adventure story. It is a primer on the necessary qualities of manhood, fatherhood, and leadership. It is not a lesson learned over the course of a 150-minute television movie. It is something acquired through study and toil.

The intention of the Iliad and the Odyssey, shared with LOST, is to enrich our understanding of who we are, who we ought to be, who we can be if we take the time to understand the fullness–the length and breadth and depth and richness–of our humanity.

Darlton’s great work, like Homer’s, is a fictional portrayal of the complete person. As with a recitation of the entire poem, several sessions over a number of evenings are required to absorb the full work. Homer expected his listeners to converse about what they had heard during their daily labours between sittings, draw examples from history, from their own lives, from the teachings of parent and prince. Twenty-seven centuries later, Darlton expected no less of their listeners.

Jack Shephard slaying the Smoke Monster

LOST is about the essence of who we are as complete human beings. The show centres on our humanity, on the essentials of culture. It is not about good versus evil, for we are both good and evil. It is not about free will versus destiny, for we are all free and we all share a final destiny. LOST is neither adventure story nor study in psychology. LOST is about the mature integration of body, mind, and soul. LOST describes the adventure of being fully engaged, immersed–even overwhelmed–in our humanity, yet having abundant faculties of temperance, judgment, and prudence to execute responsibilities with mature bearing, confidence, and valor.

Jack’s Odyssey

Jack’s odyssey had to follow the hero’s journey to unknown lands, the suffering and agony and near-death of self-discovery, and the enlightened and aware return to plan and execute and successfully complete the hero’s task. His mission was nothing less than the complete re-building of every aspect of his broken self. He was obliged to seek redemption, reconciliation with his father, spiritual completion in his Constant, Kate, active communion with the Island, movement of mind and soul from scepticism to trust, and knowledge of when to act with resolve and when to surrender in faith.

This is not a journey summarised in two and a half hours on a Sunday evening (or, for most of you, a Monday morning). The most hilariously funny scene in the six years of LOST occurred in Season Five at the dinner table in Hurley’s mansion. There Hurley relayed to his mother, in less than fifty-eight seconds, everything that had occurred on the Island. Here’s what he told his mother:

Okay. See, we did crash, but it was on this crazy island. And we waited for rescue, and there wasn’t any rescue. And there was a smoke monster, and then there were other people on the island. We called them the Others, and they started attacking us. And we found some hatches, and there was a button you had to push every 108 minutes or…

well, I was never really clear on that. But… the Others didn’t have anything to do with the hatches. That was the DHARMA Initiative. The Others killed them, and now they’re trying to kill us. And then we teamed up with the Others because some worse people were coming on a freighter. Desmond’s girlfriend’s father sent them to kill us. So we stole their helicopter and we flew it to their freighter, but it blew up. And we couldn’t go back to the island because it disappeared, so then we crashed into the ocean, and we floated there for a while until a boat came and picked us up. And by then, there were six of us. That part was true. [Whispers] But the re… But the rest of the people… who were on the plane? They’re still on that island.

The passage is humorous, but Jorge Garcia’s perfectly-timed delivery of this speech in The Lie (Lost 5.02) was hilarious. Mary O’Brien’s “Everything you need to know about Lost in 8 minutes, 15 seconds” was equally amusing. Even as I sit at this keyboard, doctoral students around the world are busy crafting five-hundred-page dissertations on LOST. This will be going on for decades to come. Though I carry the not uncommon conceit of being able to distill into words the ideas presented by Darlton, I recognise my wordsmithing is almost entirely inadequate to the unusual demands of the task. I can only begin to scratch the surface of Jack’s epic journey. And I do all of this very much aware of my former confidence in Locke’s resurrection on the Island, and humbled by the much grander and entirely unique story the writers fashioned out of material I considered within the realm of my understanding.

A Clarification

Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, circa 1990

In introducing this essay I said I was writing for the benefit of Ree Hines. I imagine she or at least some of her co-workers at NBC’s The Today Show will read all or part of my words and wonder why I singled out a most excellent television critic. I will clarify. I am not singling out Ree Hines so much as I am appealing to her readers, and to all who believe themselves disappointed or confused by the last episode of LOST. I will point out here that the critic’s mission is necessarily different from the analyst’s. My intention, as analyst, is to illuminate. A critic’s objective, the reason she is paid much more than someone like me, is that she is able to evaluate. The criteria for any valid criticism of artistic presentations must include some determination of the accessibility of the artistic creation, intrinsic merit of the piece, and many other factors that have no bearing on the more subjective type of analysis I have been engaged to perform. Ree Hines’ critique of LOST is entirely on point because she has taken into consideration all of these factors and has provided excellent criticism of the work. If you wish to read a valid, thoughtful, and well-written critique of LOST, you could do no better than by beginning with her essay, currently posted at MSNBC (http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/37308154/ns/today-entertainment/), among other locations on the web.

The Big Picture

LOST is not the story of a single hero working alone against all odds, conquering vast armies, vanquishing forces of nature, escaping the very snares of death to achieve godlike ends. It is the story of ordinary people working in concert with each other and in communion with nature and forces beyond nature to propagate very human goals. Our best and most noble virtues are those that require the happy collaboration of those committed to the common objectives of humanity and civilisation.

I predicted last summer that there would be Seven at the end. I was envisioning some close variant of the Oceanic Six, or the Six Candidates (I once included Kate but exclude her now, since Jacob confirmed she was not formally a Candidate). The writers chose not to echo Akira Kurosawa, instead creating their own significant numbers. In decades to come much will be made of Jack Shephard’s status as Prime Candidate (he bore the number twenty-three, the only prime number among the six Candidates), but the six coefficients of the Valenzetti Equation proved to have no significance at the deepest level of Island mythology. I concede the very obvious fact that no intrinsic significance attached to the number seven, and that no importance was given to any of the numbers existing at the end of the series. However, I do wish to acknowledge, as very minor footnote, that seven sentient intelligences existed on the Island with the last light of the final scene:

1. Hugo Reyes (“Number One”, Protector of the Island)
2. Benjamin Linus (“Number Two”, Advisor to Hurley–the “Richard” function)
3. Desmond Hume (angel of enlightenment)
4. Rose Nadler (enlightened guide)
5. Bernard Nadler (enlightened guide)
6. Vincent (intelligent; he understood and obeyed Christian)
7. Jack Shephard (Prime Candidate, Slayer of the MIB, Defender of the Light)

Progress

LOST reveled in disunity and conflict. These are of course the elements of good drama, but LOST took conflict to new extremes. The intent, I believe, was to demonstrate through contrast the good that might derive of collaborative unity. The building of the raft, the distribution of Dharma food, the sharing of button-pushing shifts, the united effort against the Others, the integration into the Dharma Initiative, and the final battle against the Smoke Monster were examples of the salutary effects of people surrendering individual objectives to work toward common goals. Collaboration is not only a benefit, it is essential to our humanity.

“The most important part of your life was the time that you spent with these people,” Christian said. “That’s why all of you are here. Nobody does it alone, Jack. You needed all of them, and they needed you.”

The characters of this series were lost. They were lost because they had not found a way to truly share with each other. Last season, with Penny and Desmond’s phone call, we began to understand some of the elements that would provide the foundation for united purpose. Love was shown to be the way indivisible spirits could achieve unification even across dimensions of time and space. Trust was a constant motif throughout Season Six, and was the foundation of social unity in the sideways realm. These are elementary components of civilisation, but they were almost entirely absent for much of Jacob’s two-thousand-year reign. With the ascension of Jack, who loved and was loved, who knew at the deepest core of his person that Kate was with him, was always with him, the Island was finally guided by a person of trust, faith, and love. After two thousand years, the Island truly became, in the words of Jack’s mentor, “a place where miracles happen”.

“This is a place that you all made together so you could find one another,” Christian said, referring to the sideways world, the antechamber to what lies beyond. It was here they found their Constants, understood who they were, felt in the depths of their souls their dependence on each other, their need to cultivate and enjoy every good facet of civilised life.

The Game

Two players. Two sides. One dark, one light.

No one sat beside John Locke inside the Church of the Holy Lamp Post. Almost everyone else was paired into a Constants-couple. But John Locke was not alone. His Constant was with him, the Constant that had always been with him. From the day Flight 815 crashed, he became the guide, the man who understood the game, felt the presence of the players, heard them in Jacob’s cabin. Most importantly, Locke knew the rules of the game. He struggled in his faith, because he trusted, even when others took advantage. But in the end it was Locke whose spirit prevailed. Man of faith, he knew belief provided a sure foundation for the trials of life. Knowledge, science, logic were corrupt illusions.

Locke enjoyed a place of honour in the first pew of the church, even without the physical presence of his Constant. As it was for the others, so also it was for him: he found his Constant, came into perfect communion with that place where miracles happen. John Locke’s Constant was the Island. It is fitting that his body found its final rest on the Island, fitting that his wisdom guided Jack and Hurley, and was source of inspiration and enduring respect for Benjamin Linus as “Number Two”. John Locke played by the rules. Thanks to him, all things on the Island are fair and just. In his death, all things appear fair.

With Jack and Hurley, Locke immersed himself in our common humanity, cultivating abundant faculties of temperance, judgment, and prudence to execute responsibilities with mature bearing, confidence, and valor. Of these three men, we can truly say they embodied the best qualities of men, showed us who we are, and who we might become. As long as we remember their example, we will find one another, delight in our Constants, no longer alone, no longer LOST.

LOST 6.16 “What They Died For” – Live Reaction/Recap Video

ajruck — Wed, 19 May 2010 15:40:10 +0000

This is the video recap for LOST season 6 episode 16, “What They Died For,” which aired May 18, 2010 on ABC.
My friend Allison joined me to summarize the night’s events and share our personal reactions to the show as it aired.

WARNING: Video contains Spoilers if you have not yet seen this episode!

This episode featured lots of crazy happenings both on and off the island.
Watch the video for the whole rundown and our reactions…

SHARE your theories in the comments section and tell me your thoughts at Twitter.com/AdamRucker

Thanks for watching, and subscribe for our LOST pre-finale special and series wrapup!

Find me @ facebook.com/ruckitup

Matthew Fox: “I couldn’t be happier with the way that LOST ends.”

SL-LOST — Tue, 11 May 2010 20:18:54 +0000

[Via THR]

The Day the Music Died: LOST 6.14 “The Candidate” Recap and Analysis by Chris Kirkman

SL-LOST — Thu, 06 May 2010 19:27:09 +0000

Previously, on Lost: I have no idea, because Christian Shephard didn’t say those magical words and fill me in. It’s okay, though, I’ve been paying attention. Mostly.

This week, on Lost: Everybody dies. Well, not everybody. I’m sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. Oh, and did I give something away? Well, if you haven’t seen the episode yet, why are you reading? You can’t blame me for that.

Anyway, before we can get on with the death and dismemberment, we have to start with an eye – Locke’s to be exact. AlternaLocke, to be even more exact. We’re in LA X, and AlternaJack is there, waking Locke up and making sure he’s okay. Jack tells Locke that he got mangled by a rented sedan and that his dural sac was all shot to shit, but Jack rooted around in there and now Locke is all better. Jack says that while he was taking a peek under the hood, he saw the damage that had been done to Locke before and wants to know how it all happened. Locke asks why, and Jack explains that Locke is a candidate – a candidate for a new experimental surgery that could restore feeling to Locke’s lower extremities. Hell, Locke might even be able to walk again, all without the aid of the Island.

Locke says thanks, but no thanks, and ends the subject as Helen comes in and gives Jack a kiss of thanks. Despite the kiss from Peg Bundy, when someone tells Jack no, he’s not liable to take that as an answer, and so he begins his episode-long descent into Mr. Fixit mode – all while Jack on Island Prime decides to take the alternate route and actually become patient, confident and likable. We’ll get to all that. First, let’s finish what we started talking about in LA X.

Meanwhile, in LA X … I’ll bet you didn’t see this shot in the episode. That’s because it’s from this week’s Modern Family, which even has a Lost reference. Not watching this show? Shame on you, because it is to comedy what Lost is to time-traveling, mythic melodrama.

AlternaJack is seeking answers and, like any classic detective, his first stop is … the dentist? Well, Jackie boy has found some medical records that state that Locke had some emergency dental work done after his crippling accident. So, he tracks down the dentist. Turns out, it’s Bernard. After some brief chit-chat, Jack finds out that Bernard was on Oceanic 815, and Jack was seated right next to him. Bernard even says that Jack was flirting with his wife, Rose. Jack is flabbergasted. Bernard, however, does not seem surprised at the connection.

This is Bernard not being surprised at the connection.

Jack presses Bernard for the 411 on Locke’s malady, but Bernard can only reveal so much. Dentist-client confidentiality, don’t you know. Bernard does tell Jack that another man was treated with Locke after the accident, and he gives Jack a name – Anthony Cooper. “You remember all that?” asks Jack. “Of course I do,” says Bernard, impishly.

Jack follows the name Anthony Cooper to a nursing home, where he’s stymied by an admitting orderly who asks if Jack is family. No, he’s not, but luckily Helen – who just happens to walk in with a lovely potted plant (anthuriums, maybe?) – is, by proxy. It doesn’t take long for sharp-witted Helen to realize what Jack is up to, and she is reticent to allow him to see Anthony Cooper. Helen tells Jack that he saved John’s life, and wonders why that can’t be enough. Our ever-stubborn Jack tells Helen that it simply isn’t enough. Save your breath, Helen, the guy is like a dog with a bone.

Helen reluctantly agrees to let Jack see Anthony, who is now wizened, gray-haired, catatonic and confined to a wheelchair. Helen wipes Anthony’s mouth and introduces Jack to him, explaining that old man Cooper is Locke’s daddy.

Turns out some old bastards get a fickle fate no matter what timeline they inhabit.

Back at the hospital, Jack is visiting Locke, still confined to bed. Jack asks if John is awake, but Locke simply mutters in his sleep, apparently dreaming. “Push the button. I wish you had believed me.” I believe we all know what he’s dreaming about. Jack gets a very puzzled look on his face, just as he notices Claire out in the hallway, looking for the good doctor. Claire has a box tucked under her arm and asks if they can talk.

Jack buys an Apollo bar from the vending machine – the same one from which Jack gets the Apollo bar when Jacob first enters his life over in the Island Prime timeline – and the two settle in to talk. Claire opens her special package and pulls out an ornate box, asking Jack if he knows why their father wanted her to have it. Jack is clueless, admitting that he didn’t even know about Claire.

You can get those at the mall. They’re from Italy. I wonder if Claire has looked on the bottom for an inscription.

Claire asks Jack to share how their father died, and Jack tells her that he drank himself to death and was found in a gutter outside a bar in Sydney. Jack brought Christian’s body back, but the airline lost it. Lo and behold, Claire had just flown in from Sydney recently, too. Oceanic 815? asks Jack. Claire affirms and they both have a little Matrix-y, deja vu moment.

Jack sidles in next to Claire and the two take a look at the box together, flipping open the lid and staring at each others’ reversed images, through the looking glass.

It’s a music box. The tune inside? “Catch a Falling Star,” of course. Definitely creepy cool.

Jack makes an offer for Claire to stay with him at his house. Claire declines, saying that they’re strangers. No, says Jack, they’re not strangers. They’re family. They have a little brother-sis moment. Awww.

Later, Locke is being released from the hospital. The orderly wheels him down the hall, past Jin, who has a hand full of yellow flowers, apparently on his way to see his beloved Sun, recuperating from her gunshot wound. Locke takes over the wheeling duties and runs into Jack on his way out. Jack wanted to say goodbye, and Locke thanks the doc for fixing him up. Jack quickly admits that he went to see Locke’s poppa, and Locke isn’t too pleased with that. Jack just wanted to understand … and Locke sets the record straight real quick.

You see, Locke was in a plane crash. Not a big ol’ jetliner, but a small plane, that John was piloting. He begged his dad to be his wingman for the day – that, despite his father’s fears, he could trust John – but the two barely got off the ground before ditching into the tarmac. John doesn’t remember what went wrong, and the consequences where his crushed spine and his father’s catatonic state. It was all Locke’s fault.

Jack recounts his moments at the airport baggage claim when he had lost his father, and John had told him that Jack’s father was gone. That hurt Jack, but he needed to hear it. “Your father’s gone, too, Mr. Locke,” says Jack. Locke refuses to admit the truth, but Jack explains that Anthony Cooper is gone and that Locke can continue to punish himself for as long as he wants, but it won’t bring his father back. “What happened, happened,” says Jack. “And you can let it go.”

Locke wants to know what makes Jack think that letting go is so easy. Jack responds that it’s not, and that he was hoping that maybe Locke could go first. The thought makes Locke laugh a bit, and then he bids Jack farewell, rolling himself down the hospital hallway.

As John wheels away, Jack calls out after him. “I can help you, John. I wish you believed me.” Locke pauses, a strange look crossing his face, as if he suddenly remembered this phrase from before. After a long moment of contemplation, Locke grabs the wheels of his chair once more and rolls off in silence.

Back on Island Prime, Jack wakes up in an outrigger. Sayid is there, and welcomes him to Hydra Island.

A little ways away, at the Hydra station, Sawyer, Hurley, Sun, Jin, Kate, Claire and Lapidus are led to the old polar bear cages by gun-wielding members of Widmore’s Geek Squad. The sonic fence pylons have been moved and are now scattered about the compound. Sawyer balks at the thought of spending another moment inside the bear cages and strips Seamus of his rifle, threatening the Geek he christens “doughboy.” A shot soon rings out, and Widmore is there, telling Sawyer to drop the gun. His leverage? You’ll never guess.

This would be hostage/kidnapping situation #28 for Freckles. Seriously, just rename her the freaking Human Shield.

Sawyer thinks that Chuck is bluffing, but Widmore tells James that he has a list of names, and Kate is not on that list, making her expendable. Sawyer can’t argue with that logic, and gives up his gun. The group is soon ushered into the bear cages. Chuck tells Sawyer that he may not believe it, but he’s doing this for their own good. Sawyer tells Chuck that he’s right – he doesn’t believe it.

Widmore asks if the fence is live, but he doesn’t get good news – it won’t be live for another hour. Chuck makes it clear that is unacceptable because “he’s coming.” This could get ugly.

Back on the beach, Jack is rubbing his aching head and Sayid informs him that Locke saved his ass. He also explains that everyone else following Locke has hightailed it into the Jungle of Mystery and it’s just them three. Jack is confused and wants to know why he was brought to Hydra Island, and, as if on cue, Locke/MIB comes out of the brush to inform Jack of his comrades’ recent capture. Ol’ Smokey is going to help Jack get them out. Jack says okie doke, but he wants to get one thing straight: those people are not his people, and he’s not leaving the Island. MIB is kinda hoping Jack might have a change of heart about that.

At the bear cages, Sawyer is pacing, commenting to Kate that it seems like they’re going in circles. Nice reference, grifter. Kate thinks that Widmore was bluffing about the whole killing thing, but Sawyer sets the record straight. He says that back at the cave that Ol’ Smokey took him to, there was a slew of names up on the walls. Her name was there, but it was scratched out, signifying that Freckles could be toast whenever it’s convenient and the Island won’t have her back. This also confirms two things: one, that Kate’s name really was on the cave wall even though we didn’t see it, and two, the producers probably got tired of everyone speculating why her name was only in the Lighthouse. The answer, of course, was bad editing. Mystery solved.

Over in a secluded corner of the caves, Sun and Jin are catching up on three years of being apart. Jin says he’s seen the pictures of their beautiful little girl, and Sun reveals that she still has Jin’s ring after all this time. She places it on his hand, and they smile, full of love.

It’s a beautiful moment, really. Maybe too beautiful, since the Island has a cruel fate in store.

Speaking of cruel, all the power suddenly goes out. “Uh oh,” says Lapidus. And how, says I. The Geek Squad start freaking out, and the battle horn of Ol’ Smokey echoes through the jungle. “And, we’re dead,” mutters Hurley. Oh, it’s about to get interesting.

The crackling crickets of doom and that delightfully horrific rattling sound starts up, and soon Ol’ Smokey is headed out in full force. Seamus pops a few rounds into it, as if that’ll do any good, but he’s soon scooped up in a smokey tentacle and bashed against the side of the bear cages. Cerberus goes off to wreak havoc elsewhere in the compound, and Kate looks down to see Seamus’s keys. She reaches for them. Lapidus isn’t waiting around, and starts trying to kick the iron gate down. It won’t budge, but that’s okay because Jack is soon there, grabs the keys and sets them free. Kate wonders what he’s doing there, and Jack motions over into the chaotic bush, telling her that he’s with him. They get the heck out of Dodge.

Dawn has broken on the Island and the remaining survivors are marching their way toward the Ajira plane. Kate thinks that Jack has had a change of heart about coming with them, but he sets her straight, saying that he’s not meant to leave the Island. Someone rustles in the brush, and they all draw guns on Sayid. Jack tells them that it’s okay, the Iraqi is cool. They head out, once again.

Meanwhile, over at the Ajira plane, MIB has gotten a headstart on the group. There are a couple of men with rifles guarding the tiny landing strip, but MIB quickly dispatches both of them, snapping a neck and blowing the other away with a rifle. MIB pauses over one of the newly-dead bodies and spies a particularly fetching digital watch on a wrist. He likes what he sees, and pries it loose, then heads up the amazingly well-built bamboo boarding ramp and into the plane.

Does this strike anyone as being an overly-elaborate bamboo construct, or is it just me?

Once inside, MIB spies a particularly suspicious patch of cable coming out from one of the overhead compartments. He pops the top and pulls out something no doubt nefarious, wrapped in a black cloth.

Lapidus leads the gang out into the clearing where the Ajira plane rests, and heads toward it, wondering what it’ll take to get that baby to fly. Upon closer inspection, Sawyer spies an ex-Geek laying dead on the ground. He declares this an official “son of a bitch”-level situation. Sayid inspects another body, confirming that his neck’s been broken. MIB emerges from the fuselage and confirms that he was the neck-snapper, but if it makes everybody feel better, it was only a foregone conclusion that those dudes would die. MIB explains that Widmore only posted two guys by the plane for show, because he wanted them all to get on the plane, so they’d all be together so that Chuck could kill them.

“With what?” demands Sawyer. MIB takes off his pack and produces a big ol’ block of C4. He proceeds to explain how he found it, wired to the electrical system of the plane. Had they turned on the big bird, then, well, boom. The suckers, I mean survivors, just eat it up without a shred of evidence, which leaves me scratching my head.

Jin wants to know the new plan, and MIB says that they can’t be sure the plane’s not still loaded for bear. So … if they want to leave the Island, they’re gonna have to do it on the sub. Sawyer’s down with this plan, stating that’s been his main plan all along. Hurley objects, saying that MIB isn’t supposed to leave the Island because Richard said so. Sawyer says to forget Alpert, and tells MIB that he was wrong about the old smoke monster because he had saved their asses twice. Somewhere underneath that little fib lies a plan, methinks.

They saddle up and move out. Claire sheepishly trots up to MIB and says that she’s sorry. He smiles and pats her crazy, matted blonde head, telling her it’s okay, he understands.

“So you went a little crazy, so what? It happens to the best of us.”

Back at the end of the line, Sawyer once again calls on Jack to help him carry out a sneaky plan. When they get to the sub dock, he needs Jack to keep MIB from getting on the sub, and since Jack is staying behind, he might as well pitch in. Jack wants to know how in the hell he’s supposed to keep a murderous smoke monster at bay, and Sawyer tells him that he just needs to get it in the water, and that James will take care of the rest. Oh, cool, knock it in the water. Solid. Wait, what???

At the sub dock, the group crouch behind some low-lying shrubbery. Sawyer starts barking marching orders, like he’s ordering up a tactical strike in Halo. It’s kind of a new thing for James, and it seems as if he’s suddenly had some sort of combat or urban assault training; as if, somehow, he may have had police training. I mean, other than that three-year stint as LaFleur, guarding hippies. Anyway, he organizes his makeshift squad into teams, leaving Jack and MIB to take up the rear, and then heads out of the brush to storm the docks hard with the A-Team.

Do you see what I see? Yep, Jack’s got plumber butt.

Sawyer leads the first charge to the sub, with Sun, Jin, Lapidus and Hurley. That’s one hell of an A-Team. They make it past the empty docks no problem, and pop the hatch, disappearing inside, one by one. Sawyer and Lapidus storm the bridge and make short work of the navigator and captain. Lapidus takes over guarding the captain, and Sawyer heads back to see how the B-Team are doing.

In the brush, Kate gives the others the signal to head toward the sub. Oh, lord, I would not want to be on that team, let me tell you. MIB grabs his and Jack’s pack, and hands it to the good doctor. Jack, watching Kate and the surroundings, slings his pack and then sets out, taking up the rear. Kate, Sayid and Claire have a clear line to the sub and take it, while Jack and MIB hang back and have a little talk as they stroll leisurely along the docks. MIB tells Jack that he really, really needs to reconsider going with them and that whomever told Jack that he needed to stay was sorely mistaken.

Jack pauses and tells MIB that John Locke told him he needed to stay. And then, he proceeds to enact Sawyer’s master plan and pushes MIB into the water. Claire is flabbergasted. So am I.

I half expected him to come up, screaming “I’m melting! I’m melting!”

So is Kate, who soon asks Jack what happened. She’s rudely interrupted by a pesky bullet to the chest. Down goes Freckles.

I hate it for you, darlin’, but if you find yourself at the business end of a gun 28 times, sooner or later your luck is going to run out.

This is about the time when all hell breaks loose. There are guys all over the treeline, and Jack, Sayid and Claire open fire. Jack empties a gun and a pistol, never once taking cover like he’s in some damn western – or as if he somehow knew he wouldn’t be shot – and then scoops up Kate, heading toward the sub. Sayid heads that way himself, urging Claire to follow suit. They lower Kate down the hatch.

Meanwhile, MIB has slowly extricated himself from the devilish water trap and is royally pissed. He takes out his pistol and marches up the dock, taking out Widmore’s men methodically, and with gusto. Down below, Jack carries Kate further into the sub and orders Hurley to find a first aid kit. Sayid tells Sawyer that Claire is still above, so he heads up and out the hatch to see what’s going on. Claire is busy returning fire, and Sawyer calls to her. MIB hears the commotion and turns around, shouting for James and turning around to run back down the dock for the sub. Sawyer takes advantage of the opportunity and slams the hatch shut, climbing down below and ordering Lapidus to get the captain to dive, dive dive!

Out on the dock, Claire sees the sub leaving and runs after it. MIB catches her and holds her back, comforting her. Claire is very, very upset that they’re leaving them behind, but MIB tells her to trust him – she does not want to be on that sub. And, with a very mischievous grin, we all get just a wee bit scared for our new submariners.

On the sub, Kate’s in bad shape, and Hurley can’t find a first aid kit. Kate yells for Claire, but sorry Freckles – Aaron’s momma has been left behind. Jack asks for his pack to get a shirt to apply pressure, and Jin hands it over. The doc reaches in and pulls out an ominous, beeping package. It’s not a first aid kit.

Can someone please explain to me how an ancient smoke monster suddenly knows how to wire up a block of C4 to a ten dollar Casio from Walgreen’s?

Jack suggests that they, you know, get to the surface real quick-like and Jin sends the order to the comm. Everybody is a bit confused as to how a bomb got on board – everyone except Jack, who informs them all that Locke had no intention of ever getting on board the sub and that he pretty much just wanted to get everyone into some sort of tin can so he could blow them all to smithereens. Jack wants to know if anyone can tell how that thing works. Three guesses who chimes in. If you said the Iraqi Professor, you win. Sayid deducts that there are two wires that, if pulled out simultaneously, would theoretically render the bomb inert. Sawyer tells him to step aside and gets ready to channel MacGruber.

Jack stops him, though, and tells them all that it’s going to be okay, that Locke can’t kill them. Hurley is understandably confused. Just hold on, big fella, maybe Jack is onto something. Jack speculates that this is what Locke has been trying to do all along – get them all together to die, because Locke can’t leave the Island unless they’re all dead. However, he told Jack that he could kill any of them whenever he wanted but – dig this – maybe he hasn’t because he isn’t allowed to. Whoa, Jack, slow down there. You might actually be thinking for a change. What if, Jack posits, Locke is trying to get them all to kill each other.

Sawyer’s not hearing any of this, and gets ready to pull the wires. He and Jack go back and forth, a near repeat of the classic battle of wills down in the Hatch when Locke wanted to push the button, but Jack thought it was a worthless endeavor. Jack grabs Sawyer’s collar and tells him that they are all going to be okay, but that he’s just going to have to trust Jack. Sawyer thinks for a split second, apologizes, and pulls the wires.

The clock stops. Everyone holds their breath. The sub creaks.

And then, the timer starts again – only this time, it’s very, very fast.

Sayid breaks the silence, telling Jack to listen carefully, and explaining that Desmond is in a well back on the main Island and that MIB wants the Scot dead, which means that he must be extremely important. Jack wonders why Sayid is telling him all this. “Because it’s going to be you, Jack,” says Sayid hurriedly, as he grabs the bomb and runs to the front of the sub, diving through a bulkhead just before going kaboom.

The sub is rocked by the shockwave of the blast, and there’s stuff flying everywhere. Up on the bridge, Lapidus has been knocked to floor, and he slowly gets up, making his way down to the main decks. As he climbs off the ladder, he pauses at a sound to his right, just behind a partially opened hatch. “Oh, hell,” cracks Chesty, just before a pressure explosion sends a bulkhead door upside his head.

Sayonara, Frank. It was swell knowing you.

Back in the aft compartments, water is flooding in by the bucketfuls. Jack gets to his feet and finds Freckles floating face down. He pulls her into his arms and checks on the others. Hurley and Sawyer are okay, and Hurley asks about Sayid. He’s cut off by a scream from the corner. It’s Sun. She’s trapped behind what looks like a very heavy metal chest. Oh crap. I’ve seen enough underwater thrillers to know that this is not good.

This does not make me happy. This is almost as painful as watching Juliet wake up, bloodied, next to Jughead.

Jack puts Kate into Hurley’s arms, hands him an emergency oxygen tank, and tells him he has to get Kate out of there. Hurley says he has to go after Sayid. “There is no Sayid!” screams Jack, in what may be one of the best lines of the season. Jack tells Hurley that he can do this, and Hugo takes Kate and heads toward the blast hole.

Sawyer calls for Jack’s help and he, Jack and Jin manage to pry the heavy chest away from Sun. Oh, thank God. Short-lived elation, however, as we now see that Sun is pinned by even more metal debris. CRAP. A mini-pressure explosion rocks the sub, knocking an overhead fixture loose, which subsequently falls on Sawyer’s hard head. CRAP. Can it get worse?

The answer, of course, is yes. The sub is quickly filling with water, and Sawyer is unconscious. Jin can’t budge the metal pinning Sun, so she urges him to leave her behind and save himself. He refuses. Jack wants to help, but Jin says that he will stay behind to help Sun, and to save Sawyer. Jack reluctantly agrees, but heads over to a wall mount, grabbing the last emergency oxygen tank, offering it to Jin, telling him that he can rescue Sawyer without it. Jin knows that’s not true, and refuses the tank. Jack is torn, knowing that he is leaving them both to certain death if he leaves. Jin finally tells Jack to go, and the good doctor has no other choice. He turns and swims out, through the blast hole, leaving the lovers behind.

The water is up to Sun’s chin now, but still Jin is convinced he can save his wife. Sun begs Jin to save himself, but he refuses, telling her that he won’t leave her. He dives down again, desperately tugging at the metal beams trapping Sun. It’s no use. They won’t budge. Once again Sun begs him to leave, and he pauses, looking around, desperately. He speaks to her in Korean, telling her that he won’t leave … that he will never leave her again.

“I love you, Sun.”

“I love you,” answers Sun, crying and kissing her beloved husband over and over as the water quickly rises to overtake them both.

The sub slowly descends into the darkening depths, the last of the air bubbles trickling from its shattered hull. Inside, the heavy water has filled every recess, and all is still. In the aft compartment we see the two hands of the submerged lovers clasped tightly, holding onto forever as the end nears.

And then … release, hands drifting apart; the Kwons are gone, claimed by the inky blackness of the sea.

We cry.

The beach. Jack climbs from the surf, carrying Sawyer’s limp body. He collapses to the sand, and Sawyer sputters and takes in labored breaths. Hurley trudges over, helping Kate; she keeps telling Jack that she couldn’t find him, and they embrace. Hugo asks about Sawyer and Jack says that he got hit in the head pretty hard, but at least he’s breathing.

“What about Jin and Sun?” asks a concerned Kate. Jack shakes his head. Kate breaks down. Hurley reels from shock, a tear streaming down his face. He’s soon overtaken with sobs.

Jack gets to his feet and walks into the surf, looking up, as if pleading with an unseen force. Soon, Jack lets go and anguish fills his features. He’s soon in tears, as well, and suddenly we’re hit full force with the sadness he must feel, watching all these people he’s known and cared about for so long – these people who have always been considered “his” people – die, one by one, following a path that they have never fully understood.

It’s right about now that I get the sense of something else beneath that surface of anguish – a quiet rage building in Jack. Not the petulant anger that we saw in the Hatch, or in the smashing of the Lighthouse mirrors, but a righteous smoldering, determined and building in intensity. It’s in this moment that I almost feel sorry for the Man in Black, because now that Jack has finally found his way – his destiny with this Island – there will be no more selfish fits where Jack Smash. No, it’s quite clear that right now, when it comes to Jack taking on Locke – it’s clobbering time.

Speaking of the Man in Black, he still stands at the edge of the sub dock, staring into the dark ocean. Claire is still there with him. It sunk, he remarks. Claire is upset; everyone was on that submarine. She wants to know if they’re all dead. Not all of them, says Locke, turning and grabbing his pack and gun. Claire turns to follow, wanting to know where he’s heading.

“To finish what I started,” says the Man in Black, trudging off determinedly into the night, with frustration and a bit of trepidation showing in his furrowed brow.

Bring it on, big man. Bring it on.

Cue the THONK!

Ugh, what a heart-wrenching episode. I knew that there was going to be a lot more death coming as the finale approached, but I didn’t expect it to hit me as hard as in this episode. We lose four this week, and none more heart-breaking than Sun and Jin. I think one of the toughest pills to swallow was the fact that Sun had fought so hard to get back to the Island, and had gone through so much crap once she got there just to get back to the man she loves – including losing her ability to speak properly – and then as soon as she’s reunited, they barely have time to hug and catch up before they end up drowning on a sinking submarine. And, as my girlfriend – who happens to be Asian – so hilariously put it: “Why they gotta be hating on the Asians?”

I really hate to make this comparison, but how many of you out there have seen Serenity? Anyone who knows me knows my utter disdain for what I consider one of the biggest disrespecting of fans that Joss Whedon has ever perpetrated. Of course, I mean when Wash dies. It’s quick, it’s senseless. It hurts. Granted, I did not think that the Kwon’s deaths were that unexpected or nearly that heart-numbingly visceral as Wash’s impaling and the treachery of the Whedon, but I was suddenly taken back and thought I’d mention the comparison.

I will also say this – I loathed watching Juliet die, but I knew it was coming for weeks. I just knew. And, thus, I had the chance to steel myself against the loss. As a fan, it hurt, but I had already resolved the loss. This week, however, even though I had a good idea that the Kwons – at least one of them – might die before the finale, I hadn’t made the same resolution against it as I had for Juliet, and so it struck home much stronger. The emotion of the episode truly affected me. Yes, I’m man enough to admit that I shed a tear – once when Sun and Jin finally let go in that watery tomb, and again when Jack lost it on the beach. It was a testament to the quality of the acting and production of the episode that, despite the sheer insanity and all the chaos going on, it took the time to give pause and provide poignancy and respect to the characters we lost along the crooked path.

Well, almost all the characters.

We also lost Frank Lapidus. Of course, you wouldn’t know that by the actions and reactions of the remaining four who washed up on shore. Not once did any of them think to ask where Lapidus was while they were counting heads on the sub, nor did they think to ask when they had washed up on shore. Hell, Hurley asked if Sayid was okay before he left the sub, and Sayid was in about a billion pieces. Granted, in defense of the production team, the structure of the episode didn’t warrant a whole lot of hand-wringing over Lapidus. We were all supposed to feel the sudden, abrupt loss of Sayid, and mourn the loss of the loving Kwons. Lapidus was, at best, a third-stringer. But the guy has been a fifth wheel for three seasons, now, and has saved the asses of more than a few of the castaways. You’d think they would care what happened to the guy.

Ah, Chesty. As my twitter pal @powlsy commented – it’s like he just wasn’t the same since he lost his beard and mustache from season 4. I agree – it’s almost as if that soup catcher were his source of power. Like Sampson.

But you know what? None of it really matters, in the end. They’re all still alive over in LA X. No matter what happens in the finale, they will all live on in some way or another. Whether the timelines merge and the memories and consciousness of the disparate lives come together, or whether the timeline of Island Prime ceases to exist all-together, the fact that their hearts and souls still exist out there means that all the loss, as painful as it has been, has not been in vain.

So this week’s episode was pretty straightforward – the production team got to blow some crap up again (I swear they must have just had a ton of explosives sitting around and had to write it all into the remaining episodes), and there was lots of shootings and Kate hostage situations and Ol’ Smokey action. As a result, there’s not really a whole of analysis to throw at all of you. I’m no closer to resolving, in my mind, how the two realities will eventually collide or skew further off in the finale. Still, there are a few talking points to bring up. It wouldn’t be an episode of Lost if there wasn’t!

FREAKY FRIDAY
Has anybody noticed how our favorite characters over in LA X are seeming to slowly turn into their counterparts on Island Prime? Jack seems to be the prime example of this. For instance, AlternaJack, who used to be patient and humble, has now started taking on the stubborn Mr. Fixit attitude of Jack from Island Prime. He has become obsessed with helping to heal John Locke, both emotionally and physically. AlternaLocke has become the proxy in LA X for Jack’s wife Sarah back on Island Prime – a person that Jack cares about and is drawn to that he feels the compulsive need to tinker with. Sarah, by the way, was played by Julie Bowen, who is now the hilariously neurotic Claire Dunphy on Modern Family. Did I mention how great that show is?

Anyway, over on Island Prime, Jack has now taken his self-reflective time out and has come out the other side with patience and humility, and has started to see past his own rage and self-destructive tendencies. These are all traits which we saw, albeit in limited form, in AlternaJack when we were first introduced to him. Yes, he is estranged from his wife and child in the beginning, but he takes the time to turn things around with young David, and he’s even come to terms, somewhat, with his daddy issues. All of these traits have now been seemingly passed along to Jack on the Island.

Speaking of AlternaJack’s obsession with Locke – and jumping a little off-topic for a bit – it almost seems to me like Jack can sense that Locke is missing something. Yes, there is hurt there deep within for what he was done to his father in this timeline, but despite Locke’s other great fortunes here – his deep love from Helen and the chance to reconnect and actually have a father – there is, and always will be a part of Locke that just isn’t there. His destiny remains unfulfilled. This Locke still went to Australia for walkabout, still searching for that final piece of the puzzle. Jack can sense that, and wants to help. He thinks that healing John’s spine and returning feeling to his lower extremities will help. But it’s almost as if it will take more than that – much more. It’s almost as if the only thing that will truly heal Locke, both inside and out … is getting him back to the Island.

THE RANDOM BITS
Yeah, yeah, I know it’s early, but at least there’s a lot of them.

You may have noticed by my tone that I’m actually pulling for Jack. No, I’m not feverish. He has completely redeemed himself in my eyes in the past few episodes, which means that the Island has really taken hold of him and slapped him upside the head. I’m not going to delve into all the character development that has taken place over this season, but if you want to know pretty much how I feel, you can’t get much closer than Joel Murphy’s column from yesterday. And, yes, Kate still sucks rocks.

So … what’s with the music box? Do any of you believe we’ll actually find out? It’s such a small little detail to introduce at such a late date. Perhaps its significance is simply a reminder of the entanglement between the two timelines. The music box plays “Catch a Falling Star,” which is pretty much Claire’s theme song. Claire has taken over the Rousseau role on Island prime, and Rousseau’s broken music box was a pretty significant Island artifact back in the day. It could also be simply a MacGuffin for getting Jack and Claire together once more, to reconnect the survivors and family. Regardless, it’s likely just a literary device to tie some things together in a very subtle, but intimate way.

The philosophical question of the week: Would the C4 have exploded if they hadn’t pulled the wires? Possibly not, because, as Sayid said, Jack is the one, which means the Island isn’t done with him yet and thus, he can’t die. However, Sawyer and the Kwons were still possibilities for candidates, so the loophole may exist that if a candidate hasn’t been officially selected, then they all could die, and the process would have to begin anew – or it would end with the balance being shifted toward the side of evil. There is also the possibility that, even if Jack were the official candidate, that they were outside the radius of the Island and possibly outside its sphere of protection. The only evidence against that is Michael – he was off the Island and tried to kill himself several times, but it didn’t work. The Island wasn’t done with him yet. The Island probably wasn’t done with Jack and Co. yet, either, and thus the bomb would have failed. Just my opinion, though. Too bad they didn’t have Richard on board.

Speaking of Richard, where the hell is he? And Ben? And Miles? Weren’t they going to get explosives over at the Dharma barracks a few episodes back? How long does that take, really?

Hurley is so freaking priceless. He’s even awesome when he’s out of focus.

Perhaps someone more astute in diving knowledge can fill me in on something that’s bothering me. The sub was deep enough that it would take five minutes to reach the surface at the time they discovered the bomb, and three minutes counted down on the timer until the hull was breached by the explosion. Now, let’s say the time between that of the explosion and the time that Jack and Sawyer finally escaped out of the hull was about a minute and a half, two minutes, tops. That would put the sub back down almost to where it was when they were diving before. You all with me so far? So, my question is thus: If Jack carried an unconscious Sawyer out of the sub and swam up to the surface using an emergency air tank, why don’t they have the bends? I’m just curious. And, yes, for all you crazy Island nuts out there, it could be the healing properties of the Island.

Just a random thought about MIB/Locke that may have occurred to others: It struck me odd how MIB always seems to want Claire around and is so forgiving of her, but then I got to thinking about his behavior. It seems as though he begins to take on some of the personality traits of the people whose bodies he inhabits for a long period of time. The more he’s been in Locke’s body, the more he becomes like Locke. He seems to have all of Locke’s memories, and I believe that affects his personality and, possibly, his motives and thinking. To this end, I believe that he continues to have such an affinity for Claire – and, by turn, both a paternal and conflicted relationship with Jack – because MIB still exhibits traits from his time spent as Christian Shephard. Now, as Locke, he is possibly even more conflicted about his relationship with Jack. This could also have something to do with why Jack is ultimately the candidate – he is the perfect foil for MIB, especially now that he has taken on Locke’s persona.

Variations of the phrase “I wish you had believed me” in this episode was in reference to the suicide note left by Locke, as Jeremy Bentham. The full extent of the note was revealed in “316.” It’s in relation to Locke’s urgings that they all remain on the Island – an idea that Jack, of course, opposed. Until now, that is.

The fact that Kate is still standing astounds me. I wish I had that many lives. Do you think the writers have a sort of in-joke about her kidnappings/hostage situations? Seriously, Widmore just walked up and immediately pointed a gun at her. They even wrote her expendability into the mythos of the Island. I also loved how she was in such bad shape on the sub, but after a jaunty swim in the ocean, she was feeling much better. Yeah, yeah, healing powers of the Island, whatever. At any rate, will Kate be one of the last one’s standing? Perhaps she and Jack will be the last ones. They ultimately end up together on the Island – Maybe they’re Adam and Eve, as some have speculated for so long? Maybe the remaining four will all return to the cave and see that one of the skeletons has a mark on their collarbone – from a gunshot! And then they all ride out to the beach and find the remains of the Statue of Liberty, buried in the sand. SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!!! Ahem. Sorry.

Another question: Why, if the sonic fences were down, did Ol’ Smokey just show up and take out some of the Geek Squad? Why not take the opportunity to do away with Widmore and just tear the holy hell out of the Hydra station while he’s unimpeded? Is he not allowed to kill Widmore, either? It seems to me like Smokey has a time or energy limit. Otherwise, he could just fly through the Island and kill whomever the hell he wants, whenever he wants. Of course, that doesn’t make for a very good story. This is the writer’s dilemma – what do you do with the downtime between visits of a very powerful, ancient creature? Ultimately, it’s the Superman problem. I have nightmares sometimes thinking about how I would go about writing a run on a Superman comic. The guy is all-powerful. Okay, so he’s not as powerful as he used to be, but he’s still moving mountains and beating freight trains. Other than some krypto-freak, or Lex Luthor or Batman coming around with a scrap of meteorite every other issue, how do you make somebody with powers like that interesting? Where’s the conflict? Whoo, look at me – nerd ramble.

Speaking of something nerdy, the lastest episode of Doctor Who had an excellent and intriguing storyline about the mutability of time, and a quote at the end of the show reminded me of something that seems to be happening in our two alternate timelines on Lost:

The Doctor: I kept saying, the angels all fell into the time field – the angel in your memory, never existed. It can’t harm you now.

Amy (his current companion): Then why do I remember at all? Those guys on the ship didn’t remember each other.

The Doctor: You’re a time traveler now, Amy. It changes the way you see the Universe … forever. Good, isn’t it?

Oh, and if you’re not currently watching Doctor Who, you’ll probably want to check it out. It’s only the best television show out there right now. I’m serious. I wouldn’t joke about such things. Oh, and check out Modern Family while you’re at it. It’s the second best television show out there right now.

That’s Amy. That’s the Doctor’s new companion. Ah, you wanna watch the show now, don’t you? I thought so.

Okay, that’s it for this week. We’re in the home stretch – there are only three more episodes left until it’s all over. My heart just sank when I wrote that. These characters and this show have been such a huge part of our lives for so long, it’s hard to imagine what life will be like after it’s all over. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m going to DisneyWorld. All of you keep thinking those good thoughts, and if you have an epiphany, tell me something good. Until next time, I remain faithful that the finale will kick ass. And that Jack will wake up in the middle of the jungle, in silence, until that ugly flashback crashy sounds starts up and he wanders onto the beach and the plane is there, all mangled and people are running back and forth …

Namaste.

[HoboTrashcan.com]

Isla Cognita, Part II: Cultural History of the Island by Pearson Moore

SL-LOST — Mon, 03 May 2010 15:29:04 +0000

The Island is a cork.

Oceanic Flight 815 crashed because of Desmond, Desmond came to the Island because of Widmore, Widmore came to the Island because of Jacob, Jacob is an angel who works selflessly and tirelessly for the Island, and the Island is a prison keeping the rest of the world safe from the Smoke Monster.

All the mysteries have been solved.

Or have they?

If the Island’s only function is to contain evil, how could it have healed Locke’s paralysis? Why did it cure Rose of her cancer and give her and Bernard happiness for the rest of their lives? If Jacob is a source of good, why did he intentionally cause the deaths of over three hundred people?

We know much about the Island. But with only five more hours of the Island’s story left to tell, there is much we do not yet understand. Let’s take a look at what we really know.

The Island

The Island is not a cork.

This place establishes relationships with people, the most spectacular example being John Locke. Locke knew instinctively where to find wild boar, the Nigerian plane, and countless other people, places, and events. Far exceeding young Widmore’s expectations or understanding, he tracked the boy through the jungle to Richard’s camp in the early 1950s. He found the Swan Hatch, the Pearl, and the Flame. Locke could predict the weather and events past and future. We have seen numerous examples of individuals and groups with a sixth sense about the Island: Rose, Hurley, and Walter, and to lesser extents Ben, Richard, Boone, and Sayid. The Others, through the leadership of Jacob and his liaison, Richard, were somewhat tuned into the Island. Even certain members of the Dharma Initiative seem to have enjoyed some extra-dimensional understanding. Paul and his wife, Amy (later to become Amy Goodspeed), owned an ankh necklace, for example, which may have connected them with some of the earliest cultures on the Island or the Island itself.

The Island has rare powers. Sites of intense electromagnetism are scattered about underground. One of the most active locations became the site of “The Incident,” which was the sudden release of enormous quantities of electromagnetic radiation, eventually contained within a concrete tomb and controlled with a programmed release of energy every 108 minutes from the geodesic dome of the Swan Station. Desmond Hume has an unusual physical immunity to the effects of electromagnetism, but he suffers an intensified super-physical effect of intense magnetic energy: his mind is able to inhabit several locations in spacetime, almost simultaneously.

Intense electromagnetism is not the only unique attribute of the Island. Dozens or even hundreds of metres underground a large pocket of exotic matter bypasses the normal forward movement of time, allowing matter to move chronologically back and forth. During the three-year period from 2004 to 2007 at least two individuals, Ben Linus and John Locke, took advantage of this property of the exotic matter under the Orchid Station to transport themselves forward in time by ten months and three years respectively. We know the pocket of matter was used by ancient cultures, going back at least to the ancient Egyptians.

The time-control wheel (“frozen donkey wheel”) under the Orchid must be properly placed on its axis or severe spacetime disturbances can results. When Ben Linus moved the wheel on December 30, 2004, he accidentally knocked the structure off its axis, sending the Island or some of the crash survivors–or both the Island and survivors–on a random, oscillating course through time, first into the past, then into the future.

The Island itself moves through space and time, in ways different from any other place on earth. The Island is found on no navigation chart, is invisible from space, and cannot be approached in the usual manner by sea or air. A spacetime discontinuity envelopes the Island and the sphere of ocean and air in the immediate spacetime vicinity. Objects traveling anything other than a rigourously precise trajectory may require hours or even days to traverse the discontinuity, despite speeds of several hundred kilometres per hour, and may encounter severe electromagnetic storms along the way. To avoid the dangerous or even life-threatening squalls that form as a result of an air or surface approach to the Island, the preferred means of travel is submarine.

The Island can choose to heal wounds, inflict bodily harm, or even demand human sacrifice. Immediately on his arrival, Locke’s paralysis was cured, and he walked for the first time in four years. Rose had terminal cancer, but the Island removed every trace of the disease from her body. Overall good health was the typical and expected result of living in communion with the Island. Cancer was apparently unknown among the Others, until their leader, Benjamin Linus, was found to have a tumor growing on his spine. He and others interpreted this occurrence of cancer as a sign of the Island’s displeasure with Ben’s leadership. Locke’s friend, Boone, was singled out as “a sacrifice that the island demanded,” according to Locke. Charlie Pace and John Locke himself may also have been sacrifices the Island demanded.

Contacts in Antiquity

The earliest civilisation to inhabit the Island is unknown, but Egyptian hieroglyphs are distributed widely: throughout the Temple, around the time control wheel, on the secret door in Ben’s house in Dharmaville, and other places. Even the countdown timer in the Swan Station resorted to hieroglyphs in the “System Failure” condition in which the Execute button was not pushed before the expiration of the 108-minute interval between energy discharges.

The presence of ancient Egyptian symbols presumes an intentional communication of ideas among literate people. This places individuals able to read and write the symbols earlier than at least 395 A.D., when the last remaining readers of the language died. More likely, the hieroglyphs indicate the presence on the Island of Egyptians or those fluent in ancient Egyptian communication sometime before 31 A.D. or earlier, since this date marks the end of the Ptolemaic Dynasty and the beginning of Roman rule. Thus, the earliest known civilisation inhabited the Island not later than about two thousand years ago.

The enhanced version of Ab Aeterno told us Richard Alpert was the first of the Others, but it seems unlikely he was the first visitor to the Island after Jacob and the Man in Black. We know Latin was adopted by the Others as the “language of the enlightened” (Juliet Burke, Lost 5.03 “Jughead”); it seems likely the decision to institute Latin as the Island’s universal language occurred well before 1867, when Richard arrived on the Black Rock. The expansion of the Roman Empire began in earnest around 56 B.C. with the military exploits of Gaius Julius Caesar, reached its zenith around 117 A.D., and was well into decline by 251 A.D. This indicates the influence of Egyptian culture likely pre-dated or was contemporaneous with the first use of Latin on the Island, and also indicates at least contact with, but more likely co-habitation on the Island, of representatives of both the Egyptian and Roman cultures.

The Island has been home to native or fluent speakers of at least thirteen languages. Among these were Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Ancient Greek, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, and Yoruba (Mr. Eko’s native Nigerian language). One of the Island’s most noteworthy inhabitants, Jacob, was known to be fluent in at least five languages, but was likely fluent in several others as well, due to his “Candidacy” project. The lighthouse wheel lists 360 names, most of apparently European descent, all of them “Candidates” or former Candidates. It is likely that most or all of these individuals resided on the Island at one time or another.

The Rulers

We don’t know when Jacob and the Man in Black appeared on the Island. We don’t know with certainty what their relationship is to each other, though it seems likely from their few conversations and from the MIB’s disclosures to Kate and Richard that the two men are related by blood, and are possibly brothers.

Some indication of a timeline for the two immortals is provided by ancient Egyptian illustrations inside the Temple.

The hieroglyphs and the representation of the Jackal-god, Anubis, are obviously Egyptian. However, the representation of the Smoke Monster appears to have later influences. The horned head atop the coiled “smoke” appears to have more than passing similarity to popular modern representations of the Devil, or Satan. This may indicate quite simply that the Smoke Monster arrived on the Island at a time when influences other than the ancient Egyptian culture were current. Or it could be an indication that the Smoke Monster is a relatively “late” resident or perhaps immigrant to the Island, possibly toward the end of Egyptian control.

The Man in Black is a pessimist. He believes human beings are fundamentally flawed, that “They come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt.” This is the sum total of human existence in the MIB’s mind; humanity amounts to nothing more than depravity and pure evil.

The Man in Black acts in a manner consistent with a reasonable observer’s understanding of evil. He mercilessly killed everyone in the Temple who chose not to follow him and obey his rules. He killed the Flight 815 pilot, Seth Norris, Mr. Eko, Nadine, Montand, Bram, all the officers aboard the Black Rock, and Jacob, the self-professed Protector of the Island. He essentially gave Claire permission to kill Kate once he was done with her. His only objective, as he himself has said repeatedly, is to leave the Island. He seems to care little about those who suffer or die in order that he might leave.

Jacob, Richard Alpert, and Charles Widmore, among others, have made it their task to prevent the MIB from leaving the Island. Isabella Alpert, through Hurley, warned her husband that he must do everything he can to keep the Smoke Monster on the Island, or “todos nos vamos al infierno.” It was Jacob’s contention that the Island was a cork in a bottle, keeping evil or the Devil from roaming free in the world. While it is likely he was making reference to the Smoke Monster, there are other possibilities.

Jacob

Jacob called himself “Protector of the Island”. Through his consigliere, Richard Alpert, he directed the activities of the Others over a period of at least one hundred and forty years. Usually projecting an image of compassion or sadness, Jacob professes a philosophy of freedom and personal autonomy. “You have a choice” seems to be the phrase most likely to cross his lips. He believes human beings are on a trajectory toward improvement and progress.

We have met many characters that project a wholesome image but adhere to nefarious ways. Benjamin Linus is an excellent example. When captured in Rousseau’s net and imprisoned in the Swan Station armory, he claimed for days or weeks to be Henry Gale, a balloonist who accidentally meandered over the Island. Ben lied, manipulated, embellished, and in any way he could devise, reordered situations to his advantage. Many other characters have behaved in similar manner.

Jacob “invited” over 360 Candidates to the Island; all but seven of them are dead. Most of them would have lived long, happy lives off the Island, but one way or another Jacob led them to the Island, tested each one, found them in some way deficient, and allowed them to die.

He brought Flight 815 to the Island. Of the 324 passengers and crew, only seventy survived the crash. Less than three dozen remained after the first three months. It is likely that Flight 815 carried not more than a handful of Candidates; if so, nearly seven hundred deaths can be directly attributed to Jacob. It seems likely that far more than this have died over the centuries to feed his desire to test Candidates in a most unforgiving laboratory.

Jacob appeared to James Ford at his parents’ funeral. The eight-year-old boy was composing a letter spelling out his vow of revenge against Tom Sawyer, the man who had cheated his mother, committed adultery with her, and led his father to kill her and take his own life.

James’ Uncle Doug read what he had written. The wise uncle had it right when he said the boy had to get on with his life. Vowing revenge would keep him from growing into a man. If only this had been the single piece of advice he’d received from an adult. Unfortunately, another man had come along only minutes before, just as James’ pen ran out of ink.

Jacob reinforced the connection between his parents’ deaths and James’ perceived need for vengeance. By giving James the pen to complete the letter, Jacob was feeding the boy’s warped sense of purpose, bending James to Jacob’s selfish ends, coercing him into an entire lifetime of pain and hatred, simply so that he might one day find himself in Australia, murder the wrong man, and board a one-way flight back to Los Angeles that would instead crash on an uncharted tropical island.

Jacob’s behaviour toward Dogen was even more coercive and despicable. “I can heal your son,” Jacob told Dogen, as the unfortunate man’s dying son lay unconscious in a hospital bed.

Did Jacob choose him because he had unique abilities, or because Dogen felt enormous guilt at having caused the accident that brought his son to the last minutes before death? Was Dogen essential to Jacob’s cause, or was he exceptionally malleable because of a father’s pain and anguish? “I can heal your son,” Jacob said, but the conditions were cruel: Dogen could never see his son again. Jacob would take him to a place inaccessible to anyone and entirely unknown to the world. And Dogen would serve Jacob until the day he died. Years later, relaying the story to Jack, Dogen was pained by the pain he had caused his son, but he seemed in even greater anguish over the bargain that had forever prevented him from even knowing anything of his son’s life.

We cannot know with certainty that Jacob is evil. He may prove the perfect Angel of Light many believe him to be. His coercion of James, Dogen, and hundreds of others may have been the unfortunate but necessary means of ensuring his replacement and preventing true evil from unleashing itself on the world.

The Candidates

On first glance the reason for these seven individuals’ placement on the list of Candidates seems obvious: They’re all exactly the same height. But if we look beyond the crude (and effective!) Photoshopping, we see other commonalities. All of the Seven have “daddy issues”. Sun’s father was distant and cruel, Sayid’s father was demanding and unemotional, Jack’s father treated him like dirt, Locke’s father was a con man, Kate’s father was a drunkard who abused his wife, and so on. Each of the Seven seeks redemption or spiritual completion that includes a major component directly related to her or his father.

Some will question the presence of Locke among the Candidates in this portrait. The basis for including Locke requires significantly more space than I wish to devote to this section. For those seeking to understand the rationale for considering Locke a Candidate, I recommend these articles:

http://www.sl-lost.com/2010/02/07/magnificence-the-cultural-mythology-of-lost-101-to-618/

http://www.sl-lost.com/2010/02/14/impartial-risk-cultural-musings-on-the-resurrection-of-john-locke/

http://www.sl-lost.com/2010/02/10/risk-a-cultural-thesis-for-lost-603-what-kate-does-by-pearson-moore/

Of the Seven, two individuals stand out. Jack has transformed himself from sceptical Man of Science to the fully integrated Man of Faith and firm disciple of John Locke. He is sufficiently in tune with the Island to realise that, like Richard Alpert, he can die, but not at his own hand. But every other belief he now professes is borrowed from the catalogue of John Locke’s articulated views. “We’re here for a reason” and “The Island is not done with us yet” and so on, were all expressed at one time or another by Jack’s former nemesis.

While Jack does not appear to have the strong connection to the Island possessed immediately by John Locke, he has overcome greater obstacles than anyone else, and his Island epiphany may be only hours or days away. It is possible–even likely, at this point–that Jack Shephard will assume the top leadership role in the post-Jacob world.

The other leading Candidate is John Locke. That he remains in contention is due to the successful efforts of one man: Daniel Faraday.

Faraday’s Boulder

The Incident, at least in its final permutation, consisted of the simultaneous detonation of an atomic bomb and the sudden release of almost unlimited electromagnetic energy. The result of the two simultaneous events was not a conversion of matter into energy or the irradiation of everyone in the vicinity, but a rerouting of matter and energy into the uni-directional stream of spacetime and the creation of two equal spacetime streams.

It was Daniel Faraday’s idea that the two events, occurring simultaneously, would have sufficient effect to negate the course of future events after the Incident. Since the future at that time (1977) was the Flight 815 survivors’ past, the detonation of the nuclear device would prevent all of the pain they had endured after the crash.

The plan was implemented by Jack and the plutonium core of the thermonuclear device was finally detonated by Juliet at precisely the moment that catastrophic amounts of electromagnetic energy escaped the confines of the subterranean space beneath the well shaft. The result was… unexpected. Rather than simply wiping out the future/past, two equal spacetime streams were created.

In the (very crude) illustration below, the flow of time is represented by the river. On the right bank of the river is a large boulder, representing the combined space-time-matter-energy warping potential of simultaneous nuclear and electromagnetic release.

The detonation of the bomb and the release of energy, coming together, opposing each other, and interfering in the normal flow of time, is depicted by throwing the boulder into the river.

The water backs up behind the boulder until it reaches the depth required to move around the rock. But now, rather than a single, calm, straight and forward movement, the stream has split into two turbulent, chaotic streams.

The streams are dramatically unstable and they will very quickly crash into each other on the upstream side of the boulder. Given enough time, the stream will again settle down into its normal uni-directional flow. But for a brief period in the history of the universe (or universes?), the streams will exist as distinct, equal, and yet different flows of spacetime. It is during this brief time window that some quite interesting phenomena can be observed and manipulated.

Indivisibility

The stream of time is torn into two equal streams. Each stream contains the same physical elements. In each stream a planet Earth is populated with seven billion human beings, physically identical but with unique histories. Each of the two realities contains a physical manifestation of James Ford, Claire Littleton, Sayid Jarrah, Hugo Reyes, and so on.

While their bodies have been duplicated in the two equal but different spacetimes, their spiritual selves remain intact, undivided, and equally present in both realities. There are two physical presences of James Ford, but there is only one true (spiritual aspect of) James Ford, equally present in both of the physical manifestations.

The point of Charlie’s intense discussions of The Truth was that he was attracted to the very same woman in both realities because the connection was spiritual, and therefore only one abiding connection was possible. Love at first sight was an indication to him of a reality that transcended any of the limitations of the world he inhabited. His connection with Claire was entirely spiritual, in both realities. He forcefully relayed this truth to Desmond, because he knew Desmond also had a Constant. So too in the case of Daniel Faraday. Regardless of the number of worlds his physical presences occupied, he has only one spirit, and therefore he can have only one spiritual love: Charlotte Lewis. Two bodies, two minds, but one spirit, and one love.

The indivisibility of the spirit explains the growing psychic instability between the two worlds. By now almost all the major players in this drama have experienced a “leaking” of knowledge or feelings or sense of presence or memories from one reality to the other. Desmond Hume is the only major player we know to have had complete and unambiguous visions of the other world from both of the spacetime realities. Sun probably has had glimpses into the other world from both spacetimes, but this depends on whether her loss of spoken English indicated a seeping of the sideways reality into her Island psyche. She certainly understood poor, crushed John Locke in the sideways reality as the Smoke Monster, when they were wheeled together into the hospital. Daniel Faraday, dead in the Island reality, nevertheless had glimpses into the Island from his sideways world.

The one crossover from the sideways reality to the Island that must occur is the one Desmond started in motion two episodes ago, at the end of “Everybody Loves Hugo”.

When Desmond rammed the wheelchair-bound Locke with his silver-coloured economy car, he was taking a terrible but necessary risk. Desmond knew that Locke belonged on the Island, that he had to be on the Island if there could be any chance of making things right again. Just as love allowed Daniel to see the Island from his sideways world, just as Desmond’s MRI in the hospital allowed him to recall Penny from his Island reality, so too the awful shock of physical pain and paralysis would shock John Locke into recalling his Island self, and create in him the realisation that he had to go back.

The End Game

Only a few moves remain in this two- or three-thousand-year-old game of backgammon. I have no idea in the world how Locke is going to make it back to the Island. I have not the slightest clue how Jack will win the Island over the considerable efforts and proven talents of both Charles Widmore and the Smoke Monster. Some will certainly die. I most fear for Jack and Kate in this regard, but many of the others look to be increasingly expendable or willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. The last few minutes of our beloved television programme look to be exhilarating but sad, too. This month will be altogether entirely too short, but the long seven days between each episode will be almost unbearably long. It is certainly a month we will never forget.

Isla Cognita: Cultural Knowledge in LOST 6.13 “The Last Recruit” by Pearson Moore

SL-LOST — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 20:58:13 +0000

Truth.

We are not the first to seek it. We will not be the last. The greatest mysteries remain unrevealed, but we have discovered enough to bring essential clarity to past, present, and future of the Island. Fighting, destruction and corruption defined the past. But that part of the Island’s legacy is coming to a close. We prepare now for the final battle. “It only ends once,” and that ending is now upon us. Those chosen have rejected their status as “Candidates”. They are not the Recruits of the Man in Black. They are not the Candidates of Jacob. They are the Disciples of John Locke, and those who remain will serve the Island.

Christian Shephard

The Smoke Monster claims he appeared to Jack as his dead father, Christian Shephard. This claim may or may not prove to be true, but any truth in the MIB’s claim is almost irrelevant to the greater truths known only to Christian.

Personally, I don’t believe the Smoke Monster. A few episodes back he gave Claire permission to kill Kate once he was done with her. Kate is my favourite character after John Locke, so I find it difficult to move beyond my bias to consider the MIB’s actions as anything less than evil. Even if we reject my bias (and since many of you out there don’t particularly like Kate, this should not be too hard!), it remains true that Smokey has taken lives and plans to take lives only to fulfill his selfish objective of leaving the Island. Apparently the Smoke Monster had a difficult childhood. His mother was crazy, or didn’t like him. Maybe his father beat him. Well, boo-hoo. Lots of us had difficult childhoods, but not one of us has the right to carry out murder and mayhem, and even the most traumatic early years cannot excuse a life of death and destruction.

Let us suppose, though, that the MIB is telling Jack the complete truth. Let us go further, and say that anytime Christian Shephard appeared on the Island what we actually saw was the Smoke Monster taking Christian’s form. Sun saw him at the Dharma barracks. Locke saw him in the bowels of the Orchid Station just before he took his trip to Tunisia. We will grant all of this, and any unseen apparitions of Jack’s dead father on the Island.

Smokey’s claim does not explain Christian’s appearance to Jack off-Island between 2005 and 2007. We can be fairly certain the Smoke Monster never left the Island, or leaving the place would not pose the enormous difficulty it surely poses now to the MIB. Therefore, any off-Island apparitions were not the Smoke Monster. This fact tends to call into question Smokey’s claim. But let’s just roll with this, and see where it leads. Let us posit that any off-Island apparitions were the understandable result of Jack’s disquieted soul, his yearning to make amends with his father.

None of this explains an important fact: Oceanic lost Christian’s body. As of this episode, we have not seen or heard that Oceanic Airlines ever located the body. Last we heard, they had evidence the body had been flown to Germany. Those not following closely the events of the last six years may ask, “What does this have to do with the Island? Christian’s body was lost in the ‘sideways’ world. It has no meaning on the Island.” I beg to differ. You see, Christian’s body was also lost on the Island. In fact, the sentence I just typed may contain the essence of the mystery we have been eager to solve all these years.

Here is what the Smoke Monster said when Jack asked whether he had appeared as Jack’s father:

JACK: The third day we were here I saw… I chased my father through the jungle… my, my dead father. Was that you?
MIB: Yes, that was me.
JACK: Why?
LOCKE: You needed to find water.

Here are the words of the 23rd Psalm:

The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’ sake.

I write these words on Good Shepherd Sunday, the fourth Sunday in Easter (April 25, 2010). Normally a happy day in Spring, this was a sad day in our parish. Our beloved Sr. Associate Pastor died this week, and I know there was not a dry eye in the entire congregation. The voice of every reader at the ambo cracked with emotion. The deacon could barely make it through his homily, so overcome was he at his friend’s death.

Death brings new clarity to my understanding of the events on our mythic Island. I believe the primary intention of the apparition of Christian Shephard back in Season One really was to lead Jack to water. “He leadeth me beside the still waters.” He was doing what any good shepherd would do. What any good Shephard would do. What his son is doing now, as the final shepherd of his own people.

I don’t believe the Smoke Monster ever appeared as Christian Shephard. Some truth has to reconcile the fact that Christian’s body has never been found, either on-Island or off. I think the best way to reconcile every fact we know about Christian before and after his death is this: His dead body will never be found, because Christian is not dead. He lives. He is the Island’s very own Good Shepherd. When he helped Locke at the FDW under the Orchid, when he helped Sun in the Dharma barracks, he was trying to bring people together, for their own sakes, “in the paths of righteousness”, but also for the sake of the Island.

Christian Shephard does not represent the Man in Black. He does not represent Jacob. He represents the Island.

It’s So Nice to Have Everyone Back Together Again

I loved this scene. I’m curious to find out the number of takes they needed before Terry O’Quinn was able to do this without flinching or even blinking. I’m guessing there’s a pretty good chance he did it on the very first take. Amazing actor. Whether or not he earns another Emmy, he has certainly earned a special place in television history, for himself and for this programme. Amazing.

I think I loved the moments leading up to Zoe’s appearance and the explosion even more than the actual event, though. I enjoyed the priceless moments after Smokey, his voice full of enthusiasm, exclaimed, “It’s so nice to have everyone back together again!” The response was… complete apathy. There was no response. Clearly, not a person among those in his camp was in the least happy about her position or predicament. They follow him out of fear, out of their own loss of hope, out of the meaningless promises from Smokey’s lying lips.

Claire believes they are prisoners to the MIB’s will once they hear his voice. Perhaps this is true for her, but it doesn’t seem ever to have been true for Sawyer, and even less so for Jack. Sawyer’s motivations are stronger than Smokey’s will, can never be supplanted by even the most honeyed words from the evil entity’s mouth.

Sawyer and Jack’s freedom indicates one path to freedom for Claire and Sayid. But character redemption in LOST is not a singular venture. Claire and Sayid, if they are to be saved, will not experience salvation through some appeal to a theoretical notion of freedom of conscience. They will gain their freedom through the intervention of others. Claire will find redemption through her Constant, Kate, who never gave up on her, even when everyone else did. If she finds redemption, it will be because she comes to realise the MIB never believed in her, but sought only to use her toward his own goal of leaving the Island.

Sayid and Desmond

“This woman–when she asks you what you did to be with her again…what will you tell her?”

Perhaps shaming Sayid was enough to stop him from pulling the trigger. I doubt it.

Sayid has had many chances to turn his life around. His meeting with Dogen in the Temple comes to mind. His meeting with Jin in the sideways reality. His brief dialogue with Ben in the Temple, after he had assassinated Dogen and killed Lennon.

Somehow Desmond stopped Sayid from pulling the trigger. The story demands a bridge between the sideways world and the Island world, and Desmond Hume is that bridge. He remains alive. The reason Sayid took so long at the well? He helped Desmond out.

I am convinced Desmond was able to save himself because of his position as the bridge between worlds, not because he was able to shame Sayid into submission. Shaming him was the first step, the shock, that gave Desmond time to communicate the truth: Nadia is alive. That’s what he told Sayid. He told him nothing less than the truth. “I don’t know if you’ll ever see her again, Brotha,” or something to that effect. It is the truth, and it is, after all, the truth that makes us free, and the truth that made Sayid free.

I always saw the rehabilitated Sayid as a kind of benevolent “Minister of Truth” in the post-Jacob Island reality. Perhaps this will yet turn out to be the case, thanks to Desmond’s intervention.

What Smokey Fears

“We have to go back and get him.”

Jack didn’t jump off the ship because Sawyer forced him to leave. He didn’t jump because he thought the Smoke Monster had a better plan. And most importantly, he didn’t jump because he felt himself a Candidate. Jacob never entered into any of Jack’s thoughts during the entire episode. Jack jumped for a much more important reason.

If the Smoke Monster knew the state of Jack’s thoughts, he would endeavour to have Jack killed, by whatever means. Jack poses a great danger to the MIB, because he has never conformed to the expectations of the “game”. Even greater is the danger he will pose when he assembles a group of followers, as he inevitably will. “We have to go back,” Kate said, echoing Jack’s words before they even took the Ajira flight. Not because it was the humane thing to do, or because Jack was in danger of drowning (even an out-of-shape, over-the-hill guy like me can swim a couple of miles of ocean water), but because Jack is Kate’s Constant. “I’ve always been with you,” she told Jack when they left the Island. Just as Jack is first disciple to Locke, Kate is first disciple to Jack.

JACK: This doesn’t feel right.
SAWYER: What doesn’t feel right?
JACK: Leaving the island.
SAWYER: You wanna tell me why not?
JACK: Because, I remember how I felt last time I left…like a part of me was missing.
SAWYER: They got pills for that, doc.
JACK: We were brought here because we’re supposed to do something, James. And if Locke–that…that thing–wants us to leave; maybe it’s afraid of what happens if we stay.
SAWYER: Get off my damn boat.
JACK: James, this is a mistake. And I know there’s a part of you that feels that. The island’s not done with us yet.

Jack’s former life as “Man of Science” ended on this boat ride. He has become the new Man of Faith, even to the point of appropriating Locke’s words as his own. But he knows more than Locke ever knew. He begins to have a sense of how to make things right on the Island. He knows he is neither Recruit nor Candidate, he serves neither dark nor light. Jack Shephard serves the Island.

Many have remarked on Jacob’s “baptism” of Richard in Ab Aeterno. This would have been the first baptism, before those of Aaron and Claire (bonus points for those readers who recall the one performing the ritual). As I argued some weeks ago, Jacob’s dunking of Richard was no baptism. I believe we saw the first two baptisms (Aaron and Claire’s) in the second season, and we did not see a third one until this week. When Jack jumped into the ocean he was dying forever to his former self and taking on new life as leader of those sworn to protect the Island. What we witnessed this week was Jack’s baptism by the Island.

Other Events

Many other things could be discussed: Sun’s recognition of Locke-as-MIB in the sideways world, Kate’s leather-jacket meeting with Sawyer, the symbolism of the apple, and so on. But, really, Sun’s recognition is just icing on the cake after last week’s episode, and other analysts have picked apart the Kate/Sawyer meeting and all its wonderful symbolism. So I end my contribution here. If my schedule permits–and if my head cold doesn’t turn into bronchitis–I’ll write an “Isla Cognita Part II” in which I frame the story as I understand it, before we head into the final battle.

LOST 6.13 “The Last Recruit” Recap/Live Reaction Video

ajruck — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 16:12:15 +0000

This is the video recap for LOST season 6 episode 13, “The Last Recruit,” which aired April 20, 2010 on ABC.
I summarize the night’s events and share my personal reactions to the show as it aired.

This episode was CHOCK FULL of happenings, which are all included in the recap. There’s no main focus in the flash sideways this week. Instead, we see how Sun and Jin, Claire, Jack, Locke, Sawyer, Kate, Miles and Desmond’s lives all converge.

Leave your theories about what will happen next in the comments.
What has been your favorite episode of the season so far?

You can find all my videos at RuckitUp.com

And share your thoughts at Twitter.com/adamrucker

Mirror, Mirror

SL-LOST — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 19:53:25 +0000

All the mirror scenes from Season 6 so far.

[Via Bamtan]

VIDEO: Richard Kills Jack (Well, sort of…)

SL-LOST — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 17:57:32 +0000

I found this video over at the Lostpedia Forums earlier today…

Apparently, this surrealistic scene between Matthew Fox and Nestor Carbonell is from the movie Smokin’ Aces.

Mirror, Mirror: Cultural Themes in LOST 6.05 by Pearson Moore

SL-LOST — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:01:27 +0000

He is coming.

The most important person ever to walk jungle path and sandy beach is making his way to the Island. But he cannot get there alone; he needs a guide–someone of clear and keen vision. Jacob cannot be that guide. For Jacob saw as through a mirror, dimly, but the guide will see face to face. The guide sees not dim reflections of men and words written on stone. Rather, he sees men as they are, and the words written on their hearts.

“Jack is here because he has to do something. He can’t be told what that is–he has to find it himself.” Tonight, in the lighthouse, Jack began to see with new eyes. The Island has its guide.

You Have What it Takes

The previous four episodes seemed to delight in the strange contrasts between the Island spacetime and the sideways reality in California. In this episode we were invited to draw parallels and observe similarities between the two worlds. Particularly strong similarities were established for Hurley and Jack.

Hurley continued his discovery of unused reserves of self confidence, taking on the Temple Master in a match of wills–and winning. From Hurley’s über-confidence during his scenes in the sideways spacetime, we know he had great potential not only for standing his ground but for effective leadership. He made good use of decisiveness and persuasion in convincing Jack to accompany him to the lighthouse. And after acting as accomplice to the destruction of the mirrors, Hurley had cojones enough to question the motives and methods of Jacob himself.

Hurley grew quickly in this episode, acquiring emotional balance and the sure ability to achieve goals, while losing not a bit of the ethical and moral filters he applied to every action. He complained to Jacob, “you made me write down way too much stuff…and I just lied to a samurai!” Even if a falsehood accomplished a good, it remained a lie in Hurley’s mind. Hurley stayed the course as conscience of the Island, and a motivating force for Jack and the other Candidates.

Jack is going through a transformation even more profound than Hurley’s, requiring more time, emotional energy, and force of will than any of the other Candidates has to face. While Hurley could call upon reserves of psychological strength he always possessed but never used, Jack is being re-built from the very centre of his being. As we saw in 6.03 “What Kate Does”, science and logic no longer carried sufficient motivating force for Jack. But what is the true nature of his transformation? What would Jack see now, with his new eyes, if he could once again stare into the dark well of the Swan Station?

When young Ben Linus was dying in 1977, Jack Shephard, in his DI janitor uniform, knew at his very core that science and surgery were not adequate to “fix” the boy. The surgery thirty years later did not make Ben a better person or magically bring about any improvement in the crash survivors’ predicament. When Dogen asked Jack to give Sayid the green pill, Jack held onto a small shred of his former self, insisting Dogen tell him what the green powder was. The old Jack would have pulled out a gun or raised his voice by several dozen decibels, shooting or shouting until he got answers. The new Jack had a stronger motivation than science. He knew that he was the vessel of Sayid’s trust. In swallowing the green pill, Jack threw science to the wind and embraced his spiritual alliance with Sayid.

Jack is becoming a man of faith, a believer in miracles. Last week we heard John Locke utter words that could never have crossed his lips on the Island: “I don’t want you to spend your life waiting for a miracle, because there’s no such thing.” The Locke in sideways spacetime is being transformed into a man of science, a devoté of reason and logic.

[we_are_lost_rpg]

The struggle between Man of Science and Man of Faith has been going on since the earliest days after the crash of Flight 815. Many of us believed, even as early as Season One, that the conflict would ultimately find resolution in the cross-transformation of the two men. Jack would become the Man of Faith, and Locke would become the Man of Science.

I am no longer sure this is the only possible outcome. In fact, I will assert that the thesis of this episode negates the possibility of any such cross-transformation. I believe the thesis for “Lighthouse” might be stripped down to seven words: The struggle between opposites is an illusion.

I believe this is the message of “Lighthouse”, presented in imagery drawn from Lewis Carroll’s works and in motifs unique to the story of Season Six.

Through the Looking Glass

The imagery of Alice in Wonderland has recurred in key episodes over the past six years. In “Lighthouse” the journey through the looking glass took centre stage.

Jack took “The Annotated Alice” in his hands and commented to his son, David, that he used to read to him from the book, especially the stories about “Kitty and Snowdrop”. Those familiar with Carroll’s books know that Kitty is a black cat, while Snowdrop is a white cat, and thus Jack invoked yet another recurring theme in LOST: White versus Black. Jack went looking for his son, David, at his mother’s (presumably Jack’s ex-wife’s) house and found the key under a porcelain white rabbit by the door. Carroll made use of rabbits in the Alice stories, and they have frequently appeared in LOST episodes, particularly in scenes concerning the Dharma Initiative. A white rabbit was the central image in the Looking Glass Station logo and white rabbits were frequently used in scientific experiments of the DI. White rabbits have even made appearances off Island, as with the rabbit used by the magician at Ray Shephard’s retirement home.

It is in the use of mirrors and reflections that LOST most frequently invites comparison with Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass”. Mirrors have been prominent in every episode of Season Six, and the mirrors of the lighthouse were central to the major revelations this week.

The brazen and unapologetic appropriation of imagery from a classic of children’s literature might cause us to believe that we should seek broad parallels to Carroll’s stories in constructing a better understanding of events on the Island. I think the positing of such parallels would again be illusory. In the case of “Through the Looking Glass”, we would have to find a character, most likely a female, making her way across a giant chessboard with ranks separated by brooks, intent on being crowned a queen at the end of her journey.

I think just such a misapplication of LOST imagery was made in the very creative Season Six promo designed by the Spanish television network Cuatro. The thesis of the promo: The characters of Perdidos are nothing more than pieces on a chessboard, their destinies determined not by them, but by the two players moving them from one square to another. While the ad was breathtaking in its creativity, I think it was far off the mark in terms of the overall message of the series.

If LOST is nothing more than a story about several dozen characters being manipulated to take pre-determined actions at the bidding of two or three godlike entities, I think the story will very quickly fade into obscurity. The story must be more than an accounting of moves across a chessboard. It must be more than the triumph of free will over the enslaving forces of someone else’s idea of destiny. If either of these two outcomes proves to be the one-sentence summary of life on the Island, I will be disappointed, and not a little surprised.

“Lighthouse” gives solid clues that something much more significant than inevitable destiny or Triumph des Willens is at play here.

I Came Back Because I Was Broken

Jack is a man broken, his deepest beliefs uprooted, his ideals discarded as useless rubbish. He remains in his heart a healer, but his heart is wounded now. Jack is, and forever will be, the wounded healer.

Tonight we saw more evidence of his chaotic spiritual state.

Jack’s reflected face was distorted in the pond at the Temple. This image might have been taken as a chance decision of the director to include a meaningless but well composed shot of troubled waters, if not for several images of similar content placed throughout later scenes.

We could indeed interpret the active rippling of the pond water as suggestive of general troubles to come, but I believe the distortion was intended to apply to Jack alone. In Episode 6.01 Jack on sideways Flight 815 took a trip to the rest room, peered at his reflected image in the mirror, and wondered at the wound on his neck.

In tonight’s episode, Jack again peered at the image reflected back to him from the mirror in his bathroom, and for the second time saw an old wound.

He didn’t remember the appendectomy.

My father had his appendix out at the age of eight–the same age Jack’s mother, Margo, claimed Jack had his operation. My dad recalled his appendectomy as the most traumatic event of his youth. My best friend had her appendix removed at the age of eleven. Her experience was not just traumatic–the event nearly took her life.

I cannot imagine an eight-year-old child shrugging off extreme abdominal pain causing a breathless, high-speed car or ambulance ride to hospital, a swarm of doctors and nurses peering with concerned eyes at the child’s abdomen, and the unexplained piercing of the child’s arm or hand with a huge needle followed by the sudden, dreamless loss of consciousness. Perhaps a three-year-old would forget. Perhaps a thirty-year-old would shrug it off. An eight-year-old? I think the eight-year-old would recall, even years later, every bewildering and painful second.

Faraday’s Boulder has wreaked havoc in everyone’s life in both the sideways and the Island spacetime realities. Turbulence created by the stream-splitting rock has caused sideways Jack to have no memory of life-changing events, and a vague unease about even mundane occurrences. The wounds inflicted by the Island showed up on Jack’s neck on trouble-free Flight 815, even though in his reality there was no Island. Sideways Jack had no recollection of the appendectomy because on the Island he had no such operation until three months after the crash. The rift created by the simultaneous detonation of a hydrogen bomb on top of the instantaneous release of nearly unlimited electromagnetic energy was not a slice in the arrow of time, but a shredding and reordering of spacetime itself. The appendectomy did not occur when Jack was eight or when he was thirty-eight. It didn’t ever occur, at least in his memory. The weird, spacetime-torn Jacks are patchwork jumblings drawn from two very different realities. Is it any wonder the sideways Jack consumes vast amounts of psychic energy trying to figure out where he is, what he’s doing, and why he’s doing it?

As Through A Mirror, Dimly

Mirrors presented Jack with information for which he had no explanations. Worse, the reflected images were distorted and topsy-turvy. The appendectomy scar appeared to be on the left side of his abdomen, not on his right side as it ought to be. We had to apply a correction in our minds (the image is reflected, therefore we need to reverse it) in order to figure out the meaning of the image. If we wish to obtain something close to the whole truth, we must supplement additional information (in this case, our understanding of the laws of physics) to the image obtained from the mirror. The critical idea here is simple: Reflected images contain only partial truths.

No mirror in the world reflects all the light falling on the object. All mirrors are dim.

The lighthouse mirrors were particularly dim, and severely distorted every reflected image.

“He’s been watching us… the whole time.” But what has he seen? Jacob’s view of the Candidates’ lives was dim, warped, incomplete. He had a partial and misleading vision of them. And perhaps, as with the rosy-coloured and distorted mirror image of Jack’s house, he saw what he wished to see and nothing more.

The mirrors and their warped half-truths suited well their primary user. Jacob may have had what he considered pure motivations, but his methods were tainted by his bias and his agenda. He was the purveyor of free will only if human volition would serve to lead the Candidates to the Island. Otherwise he used any trick available to him to coerce, cajole, and compel those he’d chosen to the destiny he carved out for them.

Now I Am Become Life

Jack speaks only the truth. He does not speak to coerce. He does not compel anyone to even the greatest cause. He does not speak in half-truths, in warped sentences, in falsehoods or distortions.

Jack speaks only the truth. When Sayid asked what the green pill was, Jack told him. Jack will have no truck with the dim and shady manipulations of Jacob, of Ben, of the Smoke Monster. He is Jack: Wounded Healer, Doubting Thomas, Wrecker of Falsehoods.

Listen as he utters the full truth: Now I am become life, the destroyer of mirrors.

It’s Okay, I Know Her

Justin and Jin were guests at Claire’s camp. While she was away sterilizing instruments, the two men shared quick snippets of whispered speech. “It’s okay, I know her,” Jin told the Other. Justin responded, “No, I know her.” Justin urged Jin to loosen the ropes around his hands. “When she comes back I’ll snap her neck.” If he didn’t do it, she would kill them both. Jin wasn’t so sure; after all, he knew her.

Jin and Justin were the reflections of each other. The crash survivor and Dharma Initiative member staring at his opposite, the Temple dweller, the Other. Because they opposed each other, it could only mean that one had the correct idea about Claire, and the other was completely wrong. There they sat for several minutes, Jin the reflected opposite of Justin, sure of his understanding of Claire, her history, her motivations, sure that Claire would act in accord with everything he knew about her.

Claire was their mirror, the dim, imperfect, distorted medium through which they acquired their understanding of each other and of her.

The full-force delivery of the axe into Justin’s chest seemed perfect proof of everything the Other had said about Claire. “She’s going to kill us both.” Jin re-evaluated on the spot. No, Kate doesn’t have your baby–the Others took him, just like you said. But he was not convinced. Hadn’t she just cleaned his wound and stitched and dressed the gash on his leg? Wasn’t it she–with Locke–who helped Charlie turn his life around? The perplexed expression on Jin’s face must have been the result of these and a hundred other thoughts flashing through his mind.

The Concert

Jack didn’t know David could play. Not like that. “How long has he been playing?” Dogen asked the question that the parent of a prodigy would know better than any other span of time. But Jack didn’t know. The “little push” from the Temple Master was enough, though. The Island wounded him, but now it provided the means to make amends with his son, and eventually, with his father.

Hiroyuki Sanada gave a most thoughtful response during an interview just a few days ago. Matt Mitovich was the interviewer.

MM: Why are Dogen and Lennon so obstinate, so secretive? Why not just be forthcoming?

HS: That’s because for us it’s a matter of: Who is a stranger to the island? Jack and Sawyer and their group are alien to the island, so….

MM: You’re saying it’s a simple lack of trust.

HS: Yes. To save the island we have to keep secrets and keep things out of touch from these “aliens.”

MM: It’s just that we always run into this pattern. One would think that if, say, the fate of humanity was at stake, all involved parties could cut through the posing and have an open exchange with one another.

HS: But they need to keep secrets from each other, fight each other, and hate each other in the beginning.

Secrets. Hatred. These are the things that tear people apart, that cause people to wish for failure. “I didn’t want you to see me fail,” David told his father. Looking for failure was the common thread between the three generations in the Shephard family, after all. Why would David believe his father would seek to find anything other than failure in him?

David believed his father hated him. He believed it because it was the only thing he thought he could believe. But it was an illusion, born of dim and distorted images, of incomplete, misleading reflections. Jack told him the truth: “In my eyes, you can never fail. I will always love you.”

Mirrors create opposites, distorted reflections of ourselves. The distortions create mistrust. We hold secrets from each other. We come to hate each other. But all of it is illusion. Not that we hate each other, but that we must hate each other. That is the illusion.

The mirrors are gone now.

The task of destroying the illusions can begin. I don’t know if Jack will be the one to initiate this work. If trust and love form the basis for overcoming secrets and hatred, Jack will not be alone–he will need to find others. But he can’t be told these things. He has to find it himself.

Pearson Moore

Lighthouse – LOST 6.05 Recap by Erin

Erin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:28:37 +0000

As the final season moves forward, so do our characters, both on island and off. So far, we’ve seen that the sinking of the island in the flash sideways has changed many things in the lives of our Losties. Hurley is no longer cursed, Locke is getting married, Sun isn’t married (or is she? What are your thoughts?) But this week, we were exposed to the biggest change we’ve seen thus far. In addition, this is the first episode of the season that truly feels like Season One to me. It’s as if we are being reintroduced to the characters we fell in love with nearly six years ago.

Off Island:

Back in 2004, we join Jack Shephard at home. He’s just got of work and is changing his clothes when he draws our attention to a scar on his abdomen. I immediately think about Juliet’s removal of his appendix on the island. While he contemplates his scar, the phone rings. It’s Mom. She tells him he had his appendix removed when he was 7 or 8-years-old. He ‘guesses’ that he remembers, but he doesn’t seem convinced. Realizing the time, Jack tells his mother he has to go.

Where is he going, you ask? To St. Mary’s Academy, where a young boy waits for him. As Jack apologizes for being late, the boy heads off the way Jack came, obviously upset.

Jack: Sorry, David. Okay?
David: Okay, Dad.

As Jack and David arrive home, Jack attempts to have a conversation with his son. It’s apparent that David is not interested, they do not appear to have the greatest father-son relationship, much to Jack’s dismay. Stopping Jack’s attempt to bond, he is called away to his mother’s house to assist in locating Christian Shephard’s will.

At his parent’s house, Jack helps his mother, Margo, look through his late father’s documents. Growing more and more frustrated, Margo takes a break for a drink. She offers a drink to Jack, who politely declines. (Did you notice the bottle of McCutcheon 60?) As Jack and Margo continue their search, they discuss father-son relationships. Margo compares Jack’s relationship with his father to his relationship with David, reminding him that Christian had a hard time getting conversation out of Jack, just as Jack’s having the same trouble with David. But Jack disagress, claiming that he was terrified of Christian. Suggesting that maybe David is terrified of Jack, Margo recommends that he talk to his son and to be forthcoming.

After a few minutes, Margo finally locates Christian Shepard’s last will and testament. She sits down at the large desk and begins to look over the document. Coming across something in the paperwork, Margo asks Jack if he knows a Claire Littleton.

Arriving back at home with pizza and soda, Jack finds that David has left. After waiting for a little while, Jack decides to check David’s mother’s house. While David is not there, Jack takes a look around his room, taking a moment to inspect sheet music and photos of Jack and David together. Checking the answering machine in his room, he discovers that David had an audition scheduled for that very night.

Jack drives to Williams Conservatory, where David is auditioning. He makes it just in time to catch the last bit of David’s performace and is nearly moved to tears by his son’s talent. As David finishes and Jack waits, who do we meet? None other than…

Outside the conservatory, David walks to his bike when Jack walks up and tells him he was great during his audition. David is surprised that his father saw him. They begin to discuss why David hid his interest in music and he confesses that he didn’t want to disappoint Jack. Jack quickly sees that his relationship with his son isn’t that much different than his relationship with Christian. He needs to make it clear that he does not expect greatness from David, contrary to the greatness Jack’s father demanded in him.

Jack: You know, when I was your age, my father didn’t want to see me fail, either. He used to say to me that…he said that I didn’t have what it takes. Spent my whole life carrying that around with me. I don’t ever want you to feel that way. I will always love you. No matter what you do, in my eyes, you can never fail. I just want to be a part of your life.

In all honesty, I teared up. It was touching. I can’t wait to find out how Jack and David’s relationship continues to form and what David’s place in LOST is all about.

On Island:

We last saw Jack with Dogen inside the temple. He just found out that Sayid has been claimed by a darkness, just as Claire was so many years ago. The pill Dogen tried to convince Jack to give Sayid contains poison. Sayid is no longer Sayid and must die.

This week, we find Jack standing outside the temple, staring into a pond of water. As he stares at his reflection, he takes in all he’s learned in the past few hours. Dogen joins him, confessing that he was afraid Jack had left the temple. Mildly amused by the thought, Jack asks if leaving is even an option. Dogen explains that “everything is an option” but he would have to stop Jack should attempt to leave. Jack appreciates Dogen’s honesty.

Inquiring about Kate, Sawyer and Jin, Dogen asks Jack if they are coming back. He’s convinced that they are not coming back and Jack confirms, saying that no, they probably aren’t coming back. Dogen now appreciates Jack’s honesty. Either the men are forming a mutual respect for each other, or Dogen is playing Jack, which we know the Others are good at.

Meanwhile, Miles and Hurley play a giant game of tic-tac-toe when they decide it’s lunchtime. Entering the temple in search of a kitchen, Hurley finds Jacob knelt by the spring. He needs Hurley’s help. Someone is coming to the island and Hurley’s going to help them find it.

Outside, Sayid approaches Jack. Sayid asks why the Others are all staring at him. Jack tells him to ignore the Others. But Sayid knows something is going on. He recaps; the Others told him he was infected, then they give Jack a pill for him to take, which Jack tells him NOT to take, then Jack disappears. Sayid wants answers and demands, “What are you hiding from me?”

Jack: The pill was poison. They wanted me to kill you. Whatever happened to you Sayid, they say it happened to someone else…
Sayid: Who?

More on Claire and Jin in a bit. First, we’re going to join Hurley on his quest to complete Jacob’s mission. In a dark hall in the temple, Hurley follows Jacob’s instructions, which are written on his forearm. Searching the walls, we see numerous hieroglyphics etched in the stone. Finding the right one, Hurley moves to touch it when he is abruptly interuppted by Dogen, who wants to know what he’s doing. He tells Hurley that he shouldn’t be here and to go back to the courtyard. Suddenly, Jacob appears to help Hurley out of the hot seat.

Jacob: Tell him you can do what you want…Tell him you’re a candidate.
Hurley: (reluctantly) I’m a candidate and I can do what I want.
Dogen: Who told you that?
Hurley: Doesn’t matter. Why don’t you go back to the courtyard?
Dogen: (speaks in Japanese)
Hurley: (whispering to Jacob) What did he say?
Jacob: You don’t want to know.

Oh how I laughed during this scene. It is, without a doubt, my favorite scene in the episode. I just can’t help but absolutely adore Hurley’s character. I have a feeling Hurley’s going to play a big part in how this story ends.

Moving on… Jacob wants to know what Hurley’s doing in the tunnel. Hurley explains that he’s going through the secret passage, just as Jacob instructed him to. Jacob reminds him that he must bring Jack with him, he can’t do it alone. Frustrated, Hurley tells Jacob, “You ever tried to get Jack to do something? It’s like, impossible.” But Jacob has his ways.

Hurley approaches Jack, telling him to ‘be cool’ and ‘act natural’. He tells Jack that Jacob told him about a secret passageway to the jungle and that they need to go. Jack declines, stating that he’s not going anywhere. Knowing that he would say that, Jacob instructed Hurley to tell Jack, “Do you have what it takes?”

This piques Jack’s interest, as it was something his father always said to him. He now realizes that Jacob knows a lot more than he expected and Jack wants to meet Jacob. Telling him that Jacob will be where they are going, Hurley convinces Jack to come along.

As they trek through the jungle, Jack and Hurley find Kate, who declares that she is on a mission to find Claire. Jack tells Kate that, according to the Others, something has happened to Claire. Declining an offer to join the guys, Kate stays determined to find Claire. She takes her leave from the men, who continue their journey.

Jack and Hurley find themselves at a cave, the same cave the Losties lived in during parts of Season One. We see that the ‘Adam & Eve’ skeletons are still there and Hurley makes a curious comment about them.

Hurley: What if we time-travelled again, to like, dinosaur times? And then we died and we got buried here? What if these skeletons are us?

Jack doesn’t hear Hurley. He’s too busy staring at the broken remains of his father’s casket. He confesses to Hurley that he found the cave while he was “chasing the ghost of my dead father.”

Jack: He led me here. That was his coffin, before I smashed it to pieces.
Hurley: Why’d you do that?
Jack: Because he wasn’t in it.

The two continue their expidition through the jungle. Hurley asks why Jack came back to the island. Jacks explains, “I came back here because I was broken. And I was stupid enough to think this place could fix me.” Hurley apologizes to Jack, but Jack just wants to keep moving. Soon they come up on an old lighthouse.

Up high in the lighthouse, Hurley begins to pull a chain that moves a set of mirrors around in a circle. Hurley tells Jack to tell him when the indicator reaches 108°. As the dial begins to move, we see it passing numbers on its way to 108. Each number has a name written next to it. Next to 108 is the name Wallace, crossed out.

Jack also notices that different locations are appearing in the mirror as the wheel turns. First he catches a glimpse of what appears to be a Japanese temple. Next we see the top of a church and tells Hurley to stop turning the dial. He notices the names next to the numbers and soon finds his own (which is nearby Rousseau.)

When Hurley hesitates to turn the wheel to 23°, Jack grabs the dial and turns it until the indicator stops at Shephard. Looking into the mirrors, Jack sees the house in which he grew up, a house he hasn’t lived in since he was a child. He quickly realizes that Jacob’s been watching all of them for a long time and he becomes angry.

He asks Hurley where Jacob is, but Hurley doesn’t know, which frustrates Jack even more. Poor Hurley bears the brunt of Jack’s rage until Jack finally takes his anger out on the lighthouse mirrors, shattering them one by one.

After leaving the lighthouse, Jack perches on the edge of a cliff and watches the ocean. Hurley is soon approached by Jacob, who doesn’t appear to be upset about the incident inside the lighthouse. He explains that the person he was trying to help get to the island will find another way. Hurley is confused, but very quickly realizes that Jacob wanted Jack to see what was shown to him. Jacob admits that it was the only way for Jack to see how important he is.

Hurley: That was your plan? I think it backfired, man.
Jacob: Jack is here because he has to do something. He can’t be told what that is, he’s gotta find it himself. Sometimes you can just hop in the back of someone’s cab and tell them what they’re supposed to do. Other times, you have to let ‘em look out at the ocean for a while.

When Hurley asks why Jacob didn’t just tell him what he wanted up front, Jacob says he couldn’t risk them not leaving the temple. Jacob wanted them far away because someone is coming to the temple, someone bad. Hurley moves to go warn them, but Jacob tells him it’s too late.

Elsewhere on the Island, Claire tends to Jin. But not before she makes sure the Others that were threatening him are dead, which they appear to be. Releasing Jin from the trap, he asks her how long she’s been out in the jungle. She tells him that she’s been out there since ‘you all left’. Three long years Claire has been running feral in the jungle.

Claire says she needs to get Jin somewhere safe, but when Jin stands up, he faints and drops to the ground. When he wakes up, he is alone at Claire’s camp with a mangled leg. As he pulls himself up, he notices a box of dynamite and used medical clamps. Using an oar, he investigates the makeshift room and very quickly notices a baby’s bassinet, which doesn’t hold a precious little baby, but a creepy animal skeleton covered with a baby blanket. Gross.

It appears our dear, sweet Claire is having some issues. Jin hears Claire coming back and quickly lies himself back down, tossing the oar aside. Claire arrives at the camp with Justin, the Other that tried to convince Aldo not to kill Jin. Sadly, his future doesn’t look so good with his life in Claire’s hands. She ties him up, saying they get to talk about where the Others are hiding Aaron.

After securing Justin to a post, Claire gathers the medical supplies to be sanitized. Jin asks her if she’s alone in the jungle, to which Claire replies that she’s not and leaves the shelter. Alone with Jin, Justin begs for Jin to untie him and let him free, claiming that Claire will kill them both if they don’t escape. Jin doesn’t buy it. He knows Claire. At least, he thinks he does.

Claire soon comes back into the shelter to stitch up Jin’s leg, apologizing that he got caught in her trap. Jin inquires about her living situation, asking her if she’s been there the entire time they’ve been gone. She explains that she’s had to move around because of the Others, claiming that she’s lucky she’s still alive. All she wants is to know where Aaron is; she knows the Others took him, a charge Justin denies is true. When Jin asks how she can be so sure, she replies that her father and her ‘friend’ both told her the Others have Aaron.

Jin: Your friend? Who’s your friend?
Claire: My friend. You’re still my friend, aren’t you Jin?
Jin: Yes. Yes, of course.
Claire: Good. I’m glad.

The small talk soon ends when Claire picks up a nearby ax, which she just finished sharpening, and directs her attention to Justin, telling him it’s his turn. As Claire begins her interrogation of Justin, it doesn’t take long for her anger to begin building and when her anger finally boils over, she swings the axe back, ready to strike. Jin tries to stop her from killing Justin, but Claire’s not convinced Justin is worth keeping alive. She explains that she was taken to the temple and tortured with needles and branding, much like Sayid experienced not long ago. In a last ditch effort to save Justin, Jin blurts out that Kate took Aaron with her when she left the island and has been caring for him for the last three years. Justin sees his opportunity and tries to convince Claire into freeing him. But she’s not listening. With a heavy swing, she slams the axe blade into Justin’s chest.

Jin is disturbed by Claire’s recent kill. Claire justifies her actions by claiming that if she didn’t kill Justin, he would have killed her. Claire wonders why Jin said Kate was raising Aaron. Jin lies to her and tells her that he was only saying that to try and save Justin’s life. He tells Claire that she is right. The Others have Aaron. He lies to Claire even further, telling her that he saw Aaron at the temple. He tells her that she needs him to get into the temple through a secret passage. Claire is relieved.

Claire: Thank you, Jin. Thank you. I’m so glad to know you were lying. Because if what you said was the truth, if Kate was raising Aaron…I’d kill her.

Suddenly, New Locke appears.

New Locke: Am I interrupting?
Jin: John?
Claire: That’s not John. This is my friend.

Thoughts on Lighthouse

With this episode came the realization that I don’t like on-island Jack. Frankly, he’s a jerk. Perhaps he has a right to be, but what has poor Hurley ever done to him? I mean, seriously? On the other hand, I really like our flash sideways Jack and his father role. But I have to ask…do you think Sarah is David’s mother? Was Jack able to save her after not being touched by Jacob this time around? Is there a chance that Jacob’s touch is was brought Sarah and Jack together? Their pairing by Jacob could have prevented the relationship with David’s mother. I think I might be looking a little too much into this, but what fun is it if I skimp on my theories just because I think they’re far-fetched?

And what about Christian’s will? I forsee Jack and Margo finding Claire and helping her raise her baby. Not such a long shot with this one, eh?

Back on-island, I’m leaning towards the theories that Wallace – 108 is irrelevant. I could be, and quite possibly am, wrong, but his name was crossed out. Is there any other reason to bring him, or her, to the island other than candidacy? Or is Jacob recruiting even those that are not eligible candidates? I believe the lighthouse dial was more to show us how Jacob knows so much about our Losties. And did you see the Japanese temple? I am theorizing that Dogen was not on the Black Rock, as I previously suspected. He was brought to the island just like everyone else. And I believe he arrived on the island after 1977. If he had arrived any earlier, how would he be present in L.A. in 2004? Did we just catch a glimpse of Dogen Yamada’s life? (Yamada was the name next to number 114. Check out the picture above. It was right after this shot that we saw the temple.) If this is true, why is Dogen no longer a candidate??

I’m glad to see that Claire is searching for her baby, but I think New Locke has more to do with this than first expected. He’s using the missing baby to drive Claire’s anger, but I don’t think it’s always been this way. I believe MIB waited until Aaron was off the island to begin drilling the prospect of finding him with the Others into her head. Just a thought.

Also during this episode, we see that Claire went through the same ‘diagnosis’ that Sayid experienced. She says the Others took her to the temple and tortured her. So, if they took her to the temple to test her, how did she become infected? I’m inclined to believe it wasn’t at the spring. And I’m also wondering if Sayid is indeed possessed by darkness…or light.

One last thing to mention (finally, right?!) before I wrap up with my favorite quotes. Why did Jin lie to Claire? Did he do it to protect Kate? In my opinion, no. He is trying to get Claire to take him back to the temple. The question is, why? For Claire to protect him from the Others? Or vice versa?

Favorite Quotes:

Dogen: What are you doing?
Hurley: Nothin’. Just, you know…looking. ‘Cause I’m a big fan of…temples and, like, history. Indiana Jones stuff.

Hurley: Okay, it’s bad enough you already made me write down way too much stuff…and I just lied to a Samurai.

Jack: Does it say anything on your arm about the door being jammed?

Jacob: You got ink on your forehead.
Hurley: I have ink on my forehead? That’s all you have to say? Jack broke your lighthouse, dude! Mission unaccomplished!

And that’s all I got. Like you would want more. Ha!

Until next week, Namaste!

New LOST Vodcast: Jorge Garcia Talks about “Lighthouse”

SL-LOST — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:16:09 +0000

[Via @LylyFord]

LOST 6.05 Lighthouse Live Reaction/Recap Video

ajruck — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:00:37 +0000

This is a live reaction and recap video of episode 6.05, “Lighthouse,” which aired February 23, 2010 on ABC. This episode was written by Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof and directed by Jack Bender. The episode focused on Jack’s life off the island in the flash sideways and gave us more information about Claire’s situation and what the numbers mean.

We also find out that Jack has a son (in the flash sideways) named David, but we don’t know who his mother is!! (I hope it’s Sarah.)

What did YOU see in this episode?

Leave your thoughts and theories in the comments!

Posted by Adam.

EW Photoshoot with Matthew Fox & Emilie de Ravin

SL-LOST — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 20:50:19 +0000

The article itself is quite spoilerish so I won’t post it here.

(Click to enlarge)

[Via EW.com & The ODI]

sl-LOST.com » Jack

Photo Gallery: Matthew Fox Attends Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Annual Installation Luncheon

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